The day their dentist’s wife came into the office with his children, Claudia rushed around the desk to get a look at them.  “I’ve heard so much about you,” she gasped without thinking, and their dentist’s wife looked alarmed.

“You have?”

Claudia’s face went slack for a moment and then she smiled, recovering.  “Well,” she said, “I’ve heard that you’re lovely.”  Then she reached out as if offering to take their coats, though it was summer so they had none.

Their dentist’s wife was lovely, and Kate could tell by Claudia’s sudden loss of composure that she’d not been expecting this.  Her hair was smooth, her clothes chic and simple, and she stood with her purse in her hands, asking Claudia and Kate polite questions about their hometown while she waited for her husband.

The children — two scarecrow girls and a boy with buck teeth — knelt around the cooler while their mother waited, sinking their fingers into the heaps of rubber rings and plastic charms, letting the toy whistles and pencil erasers spill over their hands.  After a few moments, their mother whispered that the toys were for patients, and the children closed the lid gently and backed away with their eyes on the carpet.

When the dentist finally came out to speak to his wife, the two went back into his office and closed the door.  Claudia looked after them for a moment like a frantic dog, then turned her attention to their children.

“What grade are you in?”

“Fourth,” the oldest girl answered after a moment.

“What’s your teacher’s name?”

“Miss B.”

“Miss Bee?”

“Miss B,” the girl said and wrote the letter in the air with her index finger.  “It’s short for something.”

“Is she fat?” Claudia asked, and the children looked at one another, surprised.  “My fourth-grade teacher was fat,” Claudia said.  “She had these fat feet that pudged out over her pumps, and she used to steal the desserts out of our lunch boxes while we were at recess.”

The children stared up at her, their eyes wide, their lips parted in wonder.  “I swear to God,” Claudia told them.  “I didn’t get a Little Debbie or a Hostess for a whole year.”  Then she reached behind the counter for their stash of vending machine candy.  “Want some gummy bears?” she asked, and their eyes floated dreamily across her face, their mouths widening into lovesick smiles.  “My kids think you’re an angel,” their dentist told Claudia after they’d gone, and Claudia held her hands up as though she had no explanation.

“Kids think I’m swell.”

Later on the roof, Claudia leaned against the ledge, gazing out over the parking lot as she smoked.  “I can’t believe she’s so pretty,” she said.

“I know,” said Kate, although she had not spent much time anticipating the appearance of their dentist’s wife and therefore had no real expectations.

“I mean, she’s really pretty,” Claudia went on.

“She is,” said Kate, for she was.

“So much prettier than Holly.”

“So much,” Kate agreed, then, “So?”

Claudia turned and smiled as though Kate was about to say something obvious and amusing.  But a moment passed, and when Kate said nothing, Claudia’s face cleared and she blinked.

“What?” Kate asked.

Claudia turned and Kate felt, suddenly, that they were standing a great distance apart.  But then Claudia shook her head, pulling Kate close to rest her chin on Kate’s shoulder.  “You can pick what we watch tonight,” Claudia yawned, for this was their only point of consistent disagreement:  Kate had grown bored with plantations.  There was too much sobbing, too much violence, too much love of land and country.  Kate wanted to spend more time with the Victorians.  She loved all the secrets and guilt and groping in gardens.

*   *   *

A few days later, Claudia fell on the apartment stairs and chipped her front tooth.  The chip was large and obvious and made her look homely and slightly stupid.  She lay facedown on her bed, weeping.  Now that she knew what it was like to have a chipped tooth, Claudia said, she couldn’t believe she’d wanted to kill herself over love.

When Kate suggested that they might find the chip and glue it back in, Claudia sat up and slapped her across the face.  The slap was not hard, but Kate began to cry, and Claudia got up and locked herself in the bathroom.

The next morning, Claudia would not speak to Kate.  As soon as they arrived at work, she rushed into their dentist’s office and closed the door behind her.  When they came back out, her eyes were wet from crying and their dentist had his arm around her.  He led her into the light, then cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face up, squinting into her mouth.  “Piece of cake,” he said.

He would sand the tooth until the chip disappeared, then sand the tooth beside it so they matched.

Claudia gaped at him.  Couldn’t he just cap it?

That would be expensive, he said.  And this would be free.  Besides, he added, Claudia’s front teeth were kind of long to begin with.  They made her look a little horsey.

Kate reached for her front teeth with her tongue, trying to measure their length as she followed her sister and their dentist to one of the examination rooms.

“This will feel a little funny,” their dentist said to Claudia, “and it will smell bad.”  Then there was a sound like a cement grinder, and the room filled with a hot stink that made Kate gag into the back of her wrist.

When it was over, their dentist held up a mirror and Claudia squealed, then leaped up to kiss him.  “Oh my God!” she gasped.  “I’m so much prettier than I was before!”

After work, Claudia drove Kate home and dropped her off.  “Where are you going?” Kate asked, but Claudia wouldn’t say.

When their father called that night, Kate told him that Claudia was at a movie.  For a moment, there was silence.  “Kate,” he said evenly.

“I don’t know where she is,” Kate said.

Claudia came back to the apartment at 11:30, and Kate gave her the message to call home.  She stared for a moment, then crossed to the phone and dialed.  Her voice was bright and friendly as she explained to their father that she’d been hired to babysit their dentist’s kids in the evenings and to help his wife around the house.  Their father must have approved of this because Claudia thanked him and said that she was really trying to participate and make connections.  Then she asked how his day had been.

After she hung up the phone, Claudia crossed to her bedroom and closed the door without so much as glancing in Kate’s direction.

*   *   *

Without Claudia to tell her what to say, Kate was unsure how to proceed with Claudia’s psychologist.  She no longer knew where Claudia went or what she did, and so she couldn’t pass the information along.  This was frustrating for both of them.  “How has your week been?” Claudia’s psychologist asked, and Kate said, “I don’t know.”

Throughout the workday, Claudia found ways to be wherever Kate was not.  If Kate was in the reception area, Claudia disappeared into the filing closet.  When Kate went up to the roof to have a cigarette, Claudia went down to the parking lot.  Kate offered Claudia a bag of gummy bears, and Claudia held one hand to her stomach as though the very sight of the packaging made her ill.  “I’m trying to not commit suicide, remember?”

At night, Kate would lie awake in her bed, waiting for the sound of Claudia’s key in the door and thinking about the house her father had promised her, the house Claudia had said they could live in together.  Now Kate pictured a small brick house amid a sea of small brick houses, a place where she would wander from empty room to empty room, a grown-up version of herself living out a grown-up version of her life.

The week before Kate’s last meeting with Claudia’s psychologist, Claudia took the car for lunch and didn’t come back for three hours.  When Kate asked where she had been, Claudia glided off to the filing room.  “I don’t have to tell you everything I do, Kate,” she said as she passed.  “You’re not my fucking diary.”

At the end of the day they sat with their purses on their laps, not looking at each other, while they waited for their dentist to finish with his last patient so that they could collect the bill and go home.

The patient was a round little boy who was having four cavities filled.  When he came out, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were soaked and swollen from crying.  He held an ice pack to his jaw and walked with tiny, fragile steps.  Kate led him to the treasure chest and he knelt before it like it was an altar, waiting for her to open it and reveal all the glorious bounty within.  After she did, he peered inside, then looked up at her.  “These toys suck,” he said.

The boy’s mother was still in the waiting room, and Claudia leaned forward over the counter and lowered her voice.  “Your face sucks,” she whispered, and the boy’s lips parted, novocaine-slack with shock, before he started to cry.

Kate stood to the side, watching.  The little boy’s mother had been curt and superior when she’d checked him in, and Kate felt good for a moment knowing that her sister had hurt his feelings.  It was almost like she’d done it herself.

That night, Claudia dropped Kate off at the apartment, then went to babysit their dentist’s children.  She came home late and went to bed without speaking to Kate.  A few nights later, she didn’t come home at all.

At their dentist’s office, people called to schedule or cancel appointments, and Claudia and Kate would add or remove their names from the appointment book.  When patients arrived, Kate and Claudia gave them forms to fill out, then collected the forms and ushered the patients to an examination room.  People came back out on wobbly knees, their eyes glassy, their cheeks packed with cotton.  Claudia and Kate would collect their money, and if the patients were children, let them choose a treasure from the treasure chest—which was really just a beer cooler painted black and filled with small, crappy toys.

Holly, the dental hygienist, was thirty-four and had moved here from Cincinnati with her husband — not her current husband, but the one before, a real mistake, she told Claudia and Kate, but an understandable one given she’d been so young when she married him, eighteen if they could believe it, and pregnant too, but just barely.  Had Claudia and Kate ever been to Cincinnati?

They told her they had not, and she said they shouldn’t bother.  It was a crap-hole.

Holly had stringy hair and a high, squeaky voice.  When Holly married her first husband, she told them, she weighed ninety-three pounds.  Ninety-three pounds!  Of course, she’d been much, much, much too thin back then.  Dangerously thin, really.  Everyone thought she looked prettier now.  More like a woman.

Claudia and Kate hated Holly.

“Her fucking voice!” Claudia would wail as they drove home at night.  “It makes me want to drive a pair of scissors through my temple.”

The more they disliked Holly, the friendlier Holly became with them.  She said she hoped she hadn’t given them the wrong idea by telling them about her first marriage.  She wanted them to know that she’d been happily married to her second husband for nearly twelve years, had given him three healthy children of his own, and also, she was Mormon now.

“She’s lying,” Claudia told Kate later.

“About being Mormon?” Kate asked.

“About being happy.”

There were often long gaps of time between phone calls or appointments, and then Claudia and Kate would take turns making runs to the vending machines on the third floor, bringing back sodas and chocolate bars and little bags of gummy bears.  They sat on the counter and painted their fingernails with Wite-Out, eating candy and planning what Kate would tell Claudia’s psychologist the next time they met.

Some afternoons, Holly lingered around their counter, nibbling at their candy and asking Claudia and Kate questions about their lives, then telling them about her own before they had a chance to answer.

“Are you virgins?” she asked, and Claudia snorted while Kate tried to look busy organizing that morning’s charts — there were only two, and she stacked one on top of the other, then switched the top one to the bottom, then switched them again.

Holly had lost her virginity when she was thirteen to a boy who was seventeen and working at her stepfather’s auto shop.  They’d done it in the backseat of a 1977 Crown Vic that had been brought into the shop for faulty steering, and afterward, the boy had bought Holly a root beer from the vending machine.  When she thought about it now, Holly said, it made her kind of sad.  But she tried to remind herself that she’d had low self-esteem back then, and that it was Cincinnati.

At the office, their dentist often bought them lunch and let them go home early, and though he had given up cigarettes several years ago, he let them use his key to the roof when they took smoke breaks, which, he told them, could get him in a lot of trouble if anyone found out.  During one of their smoke breaks on the roof, Holly told Claudia and Kate that their dentist had been treated very poorly by his former business partner when something private was discovered about his personal life.  But their dentist had handled the situation with dignity and grace.  “He could have made a fuss,” Holly told them.  “He could have fought for his rights.  But he walked away, left like a gentleman.”

“Why?” Claudia asked, and Holly’s gaze drifted over the parking lot below, across the small, silver roofs of the doctors’ sports cars and luxury sedans, the canvas tops of convertibles.

Things hadn’t been easy for Holly either, she said.  She’d worked in that office for a long time, been friends with the other women who worked there.  Thought she’d been friends with them, anyway.

“You’re not friends now?” Kate asked, and Holly stubbed her cigarette out with the toe of her shoe.

Sometimes friendships were difficult in offices, Holly said.  “You know how women can be,” she told Kate, and her eyes darted sideways at Claudia.  “Mean.”

Claudia stared down at Holly’s cigarette butt and her mouth crept back into a slanted half-smile.  “I didn’t know Mormons were allowed to smoke.”

That afternoon, Claudia and Kate paused beside Holly’s minivan as they crossed the parking lot to their car.  The van was rusty and covered with dents and scratches and drawings her children had made in the dirt with their fingers.  Claudia glanced around the parking lot to see that she and Kate were alone, then made a gash along the driver’s door with her car key.

Kate clamped her hands over her mouth to silence the cry she felt rising inside. The mark was five or six inches long — sizable, significant, not an accident.  But it blended in with the existing wounds of the car, and there was a good chance Holly, or anyone else, wouldn’t notice.

Still, Kate felt the panic rolling across her like waves, the unsteadiness of what Claudia had just done, the door she had opened.  And when nothing happened, no sirens went off and no men in uniforms came to drag them away, the panic brightened into a giddiness that Kate felt rushing through her joints like champagne bubbles.

“Why?” she asked, and Claudia shrugged.

“We hate her.”

*   *   *

Claudia’s psychologist thought they needed to work on impulse control.  Five times a day, they were supposed to tell themselves no.  They were supposed to say no to things they really wanted.  They were supposed to say no and mean it.

“That’s stupid,” Claudia said.  “I don’t want to.”

Their dentist had given them permission to come in late on Thursdays so that Kate could meet with Claudia’s psychologist, though he thought that he had given them permission to come in late so that they could tutor slow readers at the YMCA.   This week, Kate had told Claudia’s psychologist about gashing Holly’s van in the parking lot.  She also told Claudia’s psychologist about driving by their dentist’s house at night, because she and Claudia had done this several times.

Claudia wanted to get a look at his family, so they’d found his house — they were pretty sure it was his house — but they couldn’t see inside.  At first, Kate had wondered if this might not be a good idea, but Claudia assured her that it was only natural to be curious about the personal lives of their coworkers, and Kate really did want to see where their dentist lived.

The neighborhood was nice enough, but the gutters on their dentist’s house were swollen and sagging with rotting leaves, and the yard was brown and weedy.  “Guess things are a little slow-going at the new practice,” Claudia said.

From Holly they’d learned that their dentist had a wife and three children, though he worked very hard and didn’t get to spend much time with them.

“He doesn’t wear a ring,” Claudia said.

“Lots of men don’t wear rings,” Kate said — their father didn’t wear a ring.

“Does your husband wear a ring?” Claudia asked Holly, who blinked at the floor then said that he did.  “You see?” Claudia told Kate.  “Holly’s husband wears a ring and our dentist doesn’t.  He hates his wife.”

After her session with Claudia’s psychologist, Kate peeled the fake bandage off her hand while she explained to Claudia:  It was important for their development as human beings to tell themselves no.  No damage to property.  No candy for breakfast.  No drive-bys.  Five times a day: No, no, no, no, no.

Claudia was holding an unlit cigarette in one hand, and when she reached for a lighter with the other, Kate pointed back and forth between them.  “No.”

Claudia paused for a moment, then pointed back and forth between herself and Kate.  “Um…No,” she said and lit her cigarette.

Kate worried that Claudia would not approve of this arrangement.  But the night their father delivered Kate to her sister’s apartment, Claudia threw her arms around Kate’s neck and buried her face in her shoulder.  Claudia’s hair smelled like marijuana and cigarette smoke and Kate could feel the angles of her body through her clothing, all edges and corners and knobs.  “Thank God you’re here,” Claudia said.  “I’ve been so fucked up and lonely.”

Growing up, Claudia had never taken the slightest notice of Kate, but now she clung to her.  She wound her fingers through Kate’s hair and leaned sideways against her when they watched television.  The affair with the professor, Claudia said, had left her broken and wasted and useless.  They sat on Claudia’s futon, and Claudia rested her head on Kate’s thigh as she talked about her heartbreak, her misery, her feelings of desperation.  She hadn’t really wanted to kill herself, she said.  She’d only wanted word to get back to him that she’d tried.

Kate looked down at the bandage on the back of Claudia’s hand, a square piece of gauze held in place by several rows of white tape.  Claudia’s heart had been raped and pillaged for the last time, she said.  Men were savages, every single one of them, and she vowed that she was done with them forever.  Besides, Claudia had Kate now.  They would look after each other, would guard each other from the outside world and stave off each other’s loneliness.  All they had to do was make it through the next six years, Claudia said, and then they could live in the house Kate’s father had promised her.

Kate pictured their lives stretching beyond them like an endless summer, the house, which could be any house, full of Claudia’s things — Claudia’s pictures and futon and wall tapestries that smelled like incense, her twinkle lights and cinder-block bookshelves — the house where they would grow old and forget the world together.

At night, Claudia begged Kate to sleep in her bed with her — “Don’t leave me alone,” she whispered, “I can’t bear to sleep alone” — and Kate had never felt more loved.

The day before Claudia was to meet with her psychologist, she made a plea to Kate:  Hadn’t she been through enough?  Her heart was broken, she’d been kicked out of school, and now she was supposed to talk to a stranger about it?  Claudia was sure the psychologist wouldn’t notice if — just for this week — Kate went in her place.

“What will I talk about?” Kate asked, and Claudia said she didn’t care.

“Whatever you want.  Talk about me.  I’ve told you everything.  You tell her, then tell me what she says.”

A flutter of panic stirred through Kate’s stomach.  “What if I mess up?”

Claudia frowned.  “Then I’ll hate you.”

The next morning, Claudia taped a piece of gauze across the back of Kate’s hand then stood so that they could examine each other side by side in the bathroom mirror.  Just think, Claudia said after a moment, if Kate lost five pounds and Claudia gained five, they’d look exactly the same.

Claudia didn’t want to risk being seen together, so Kate walked the eight blocks to the college by herself, then waited at the Student Health Center for Claudia’s name to be called.  The session was not nearly as difficult as Kate had feared.  Claudia’s psychologist asked what was going on in Claudia’s life, and Kate told her about Claudia’s professor, how they had met in a bar and he had bought her a drink because he was alone and she was crying.  The two had fallen in love, had been meant to fall in love by some great force that might or might not be God.  Claudia had thought everything was going to be different now, that because he loved her, her life would change.  But then he stopped coming to see her.  He stopped returning her calls.  At the end of the hour, Kate walked home and told Claudia that her psychologist thought she was very brave.

Claudia was delighted.  She cupped her hands around Kate’s face and kissed her forehead.  “You’ll go from now on.”

During the day, Claudia and Kate stayed inside, smoking cigarettes and watching miniseries after miniseries about long-suffering daughters of plantation owners who, in spite of having riches and beauty beyond compare, were miserable because they loved men they could not be with.  These men were usually poor or black or away at war.  Sometimes they were scoundrels.  “I am terribly unhappy,” Claudia and Kate said to each other in their best Southern belle accents.  “I was born to suffah.”

The second time Kate went to Claudia’s psychologist, they talked about how Claudia spent her time.  “I watch television,” Kate said.  “I cry in bed.  And I smoke a lot of pot.”  Then she went home to deliver the news:  They had to get jobs.

Claudia laughed.  “Forget it.”

But the following week, Claudia’s psychologist was more insistent — Claudia was not to spend the summer smoking pot and watching television.  Claudia needed to dress up and go out.  She needed to be counted on to do set tasks, then rewarded for doing these tasks.  Getting a job, Claudia’s psychologist said to Kate, was going to make all the difference in improving Claudia’s chances of functioning successfully in the larger world.  Then she called Kate’s father and said the same thing to him.

*   *   *

The dentist needed someone who could start right away, and the work was not skilled—answering phones and mailing letters.  His office was in a large building filled with different doctors’ offices:  dermatologists and optometrists, other dentists.  Claudia and Kate sat in a row of chairs with two other women who were also waiting to interview.  The other women were older and heavier and they both wore shapeless floral dresses and panty hose.  Claudia thumbed through a fashion magazine while they waited, and Kate nudged her wrist then gestured toward the women.  Should we have worn panty hose? she mouthed.  Claudia looked at their legs, then shook her head no.

The dentist had broad shoulders and square hands and hair so yellow Kate thought it must be dyed.  During their interview, he looked over their résumés, which were not really résumés, but lists of clubs they’d belonged to in high school and awards they’d won in activities like track and choir.  The dentist had a deep voice and a thick, scruffy mustache, which Claudia would later say was proof that his hair color was natural, because what kind of person would dye a mustache?

“So,” the dentist asked them, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Journalists,” Kate said, because she thought this would make him want to hire them to answer his phone and mail his letters.

“Millionaires,” Claudia said, and the corner of his mustache twitched.

He asked why they wanted to work in his office, and Claudia told him that dentists gave beautiful smiles to people who might not otherwise have them and that they both admired this service, though they themselves had inherited perfect teeth and never needed braces.

They smiled then so that he could see their perfect teeth, and the dentist rocked back in his chair, folding his fingers beneath his chin.  Orthodontists, he said, were responsible for braces.  Not dentists.

Kate tried to think of something interesting she knew about dentists to prove that they thought dentists were interesting, but before she could come up with anything, Claudia leaned forward, resting her elbows lightly on the dentist’s desk.  Also, she said, they had perfect vision.

The dentist had not been planning to hire two people — there was hardly enough work for one, but he wanted his practice to have a warm, family feeling, and what better way than to hire sisters?  People would know right away Claudia and Kate were sisters, he said, because he himself had known right away.  Some might even think they were twins!

The snag, he told them, had to do with money.  For many years, the dentist had been partners with another dentist, but they had parted ways and the other dentist had retained most of their shared patients, though he had done so by methods that were certainly unethical, if not illegal.  Their dentist was still trying to get on his feet, he said.  The rent in this building was steeper than they might think.  Plus, he had Holly to think about, and Holly was full-time.

He liked them a lot, though, and he didn’t want to break up a set.  If they would agree to make a little less than he’d offered in the paper, and if they were okay with getting paid under the table, he thought he could make it work.

They would and they were, and they shook hands with the dentist and went back to Claudia’s apartment to call their parents with the good news.

“Let me talk to Kate for a minute,” their father said after the congratulations had passed.

Claudia was lying on the kitchen floor while Kate sat on the counter, and she clicked her thumb down on the receiver, then covered the mouthpiece with her palm and slid her thumb back off, listening.

“How’s everything?” their father asked.

“Good,” said Kate.

“Your sister seems okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No sign of Dr. Dickweed?”

“Huh?”

“The professor.”

“Oh,” Kate said, “no,” and Claudia held the phone away from her head as she laughed into the floor.

Kate’s father sighed.  “So it’s still completely over?”

Claudia rolled onto her back, and her hair spilled on the linoleum like a puddle of black ink around her head.  She smiled up at Kate, then stuck out her tongue.

“Completely,” Kate said.

The summer before Kate’s sister dropped out of college, they both got jobs working for a dentist.  Kate was sixteen and had been sent to stay with Claudia in Claudia’s college apartment while their parents figured a few things out, including whether or not they wanted to stay married to each other (not) and how much larger their kitchen should be (much), though probably not in that order.

Up until now, Kate had never spent much time with her sister, mostly because Claudia was five years older and had always existed largely outside the boundaries of Kate’s world, but also because Claudia found Kate annoying.  “You could be twins,” people often said to them, and it was almost true.  They had the same dark, shaggy hair and ghostly skin, the same narrow jaws and thin, bloodless lips, the same long, creepy fingers.  But Claudia was taller and thinner.  Not enough to keep people from mistaking them for each other when they ran into them alone.  But enough that — so long as they were together — no one ever got them confused.

They were terribly unhappy that summer, Claudia because she was doing poorly in school; because she thought that their parents were overbearing tyrants who had never understood her; because she felt pent-up and pushed-around; because she had fallen in love again; and because, again, the experience had not gone well.  Kate was terribly unhappy because she was always terribly unhappy.

Originally, the plan had called for Kate to spend the summer in New Hampshire with an aunt.  Kate had not cared for this plan, but her parents made great promises — spend the summer in New Hampshire, they told her, and in the fall she could have her own phone line, an extended curfew, and limitless use of the car.  Kate rarely got phone calls or invitations to go out, and she had yet to learn how to drive, but she liked the idea of herself as someone who could benefit from such a bargain, and so she agreed to it.

In school, Kate read novels about girls who were kleptomaniacs or drug addicts or in love with their brothers, and the absence of such suffering in her own life was a source of perpetual anguish to her.  Kate’s unhappiness was like weather, a storm rolling constantly toward or away from her, a force she could feel approaching like a hum of electrical current across her skin before it broke open, soaking her in sadness, and she would have no choice but to brace against the misery until it wore itself out on her and passed on to someone else.

How she longed for a tragedy — a well in which to pour her sorrow — a rare blood disease or psychotic break, a doomed love affair, one in which many people would be invested and many people would get hurt.  It was her great hope that something god-awful might happen in New Hampshire.

But two weeks before Kate was to leave, Claudia told a TA that she was going to kill herself, then stabbed a pair of scissors into the back of her hand.  And after that, the summer belonged to Claudia.

*   *   *

What their father didn’t have time for, he explained as he drove Kate the three hours north to Claudia’s, was this bullshit with the college.  After the incident with the scissors, Claudia had not been permitted to finish the semester and was required to meet with a psychologist at the Student Health Center once a week for the whole summer.  If at the end of the summer this psychologist gave her approval, Claudia would be welcome back to school in the fall.

Mountains from molehills, Kate’s father said.  This was a college, for Christ’s sake.  If they got rid of every high-strung girl who dabbled in the art of self-mutilation, there wouldn’t be a single female left on campus.  And that included faculty.

This mess was because of a professor, that’s what Kate’s father said, another married man with loose morals with whom Claudia had managed to entangle herself.  Things fell apart, of course, then so did Claudia.  When she couldn’t find the professor, she went to his TA — some poor kid grading papers who nearly shit his pants when Claudia skewered herself in his cubicle.

“Who’s the professor?” Kate asked, and her father squinted for a moment as if he was about to sneeze, then didn’t.

The details, he said, were unimportant.  Besides, that was all over.  And the college didn’t know a thing about the relationship — the college didn’t need to know.  From here on out they would handle the situation as a family, and as a family, their focus should be keeping Claudia on the right track.

Kate’s father knew that he was asking a lot of her, knew that he had made certain promises in return for her compliance in spending the summer in New Hampshire, and he was willing to uphold those promises even though New Hampshire was no longer part of the bargain.  He was, in fact, willing to up the ante.  All Kate had to do was help keep her sister out of trouble this summer and her father would, upon Kate’s graduation from college in six years, give her the down payment on a house.  Now, how about that for a deal?

“The God of Animals” was an international bestseller and the winner of an American Library Association’s Alex Award, a PNBA Award, an MPIBA Award, and others.  It  was chosen as a Book Sense Pick, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title, and named by Amazon as the No. 1  Fiction Debut of 2007.

Vogue raved that “Aryn Kyle’s stunning debut is a wry and moving look at a disappearing way of life … an astonishingly assured debut … powerfully understated, ruefully funny … it’s early Annie Proulx to whom she bears particular comparison.”

The Boston Globe added that “‘The God of Animals’ does what the best fiction does — it creates a whole living, breathing world and unfolds it in front of us, granting us entry into a place that, like this author, is impossible to forget.”

Aryn’s short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories 2007, Best New American Voices 2005, and elsewhere.

She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a National Magazine Award in fiction.

Aryn was born in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado. She lives in New York City.

Visit her online at www.arynkyle.com.

The Case of Miss Violeta Louise Stokes
by
Walter E. Myers, Ph.D.
September 1953

Introduction

In order to reconcile the events surrounding Miss Violeta Louise Stokes’s disappearance, I have undertaken a preliminary fact-finding case history.  My intention is to uncover the root causes of my seeming obsession with patient.  This is intended as a private, unofficial document only.

Preliminary Statement

Miss Violeta Louise Stokes, twenty-three years old and a voluntary patient at the State Hospital for two-months (during which her intensive psychoanalysis took place, two hours at a time — sometimes more — six days a week), was a victim of parental neglect.  She demonstrated significant indications of a persistent Electra complex, exhibiting itself in her self-destructive promiscuity (“I decided that the way to a man’s heart was not through his stomach, as my Home Economics teacher indicated, but through his penis”).

For six months she was the mistress of a bandleader, an incurable alcoholic, more than twice her age, and a degenerate with a wife and two children.  After his accidental death (hit and killed by a Chrysler Imperial), she became distressed by suicidal thoughts, and she committed herself to the hospital and to my care.

I was at her intake, though she couldn’t see me watching from behind a mirror — an observation post.  She wore a turtleneck sweater, beige pencil skirt, wide leather belt, and flat ballerina-style shoes.  She had one suitcase.  I noticed its clasp was broken, held together with twine.

While she answered the nurse’s questions, she touched the neck of her sweater, and periodically, she gazed out the window.  A thin rain marked the sky.  For the most part, she kept her gaze not on the nurse, but on the wall behind the nurse, as if she thought by staring hard enough, she might find a solution.

At one point, while the nurse was occupied with her note taking, the patient picked up a Life magazine at a side table.  She studied the cover carefully, with interest, but then she set the magazine down and forgot about it.

I continued to watch her, trying to isolate what drew me to her — but it was impossible to identify.  When she shifted, fingered her sweater — everything changed, entire new possibilities opened.

A first admission of a possible connection between patient and myself took place near the end of the first month.

“You’re young,” she says.  “You have no idea.”

“I’m your age.”

No answer.

“I’m your age.”

“Maybe but you’re young.”

Her progressive defective judgment caused me to demand extended treatment, and in the last days, patient became hostile, held against her will.  She disappeared eleven days ago, presumably during the chaos and distraction of lunch hour, aided by an El Salvadorian janitor who has since gone missing.

The last event recited in her psychoanalytic narrative (an estimated one hour and fifteen minutes preceding her escape through a side-window, as indicated by a ladder found underneath window) was a vitriolic attack — directed at me — the results of which have not only caused me a great deal of distressful introspection, but also a mandatory three-week “vacation” (day two, Bimini Island) in which I’ve been instructed to “relax” and “take it easy” and “not let that crazy damn bitch get to you and ruin the promise of a long career.”

While I’m fairly certain that a private (for my eyes only!) case study was not what my superiors had in mind, it is my hope that the very nature of its structure will both clear my head and provide some kind of meaning in what has very clearly become my own existentialist-like crisis.

Side note: “Good God, man!  What the hell is wrong with you?”  These were the exact words of Doctor Robert H. Lockney, my superior, on finding me near the dining hall, prostrate, crushed, conscious of nothing but patient’s escape through window, groaning.  It was like a full blow to my chest.

Side note: Patient is of mixed parentage, half-English, half-Irish — maybe a dash of Dutch and German.  I remember her features more distinctly than when I was in her physical presence, although my powers of imagination might be recreating a more enhanced and idealized image.

Her hips are wide, in a disarmingly feminine and candid sense, and they rock as she walks, as if without her permission.  I close my eyes, and her face appears.  Large expressive mouth, long eyelashes, light freckles.  She laughs, and a bubble of joy rides my throat.  She scrutinizes — she blinks — and my insides tighten.  “Never grow up,” she says.  “That’s my motto” — wide smile, and then, when she closes her lips, I’m there, at the edge of her mouth, lips pressed together.  Awe and exhilaration.

Family Situation

She remembers being a “real tomboy, climbing fences and trees, not afraid, able to stand up to the mean boys.”  Characteristic of her adventurous spirit, she wanted to grow up to be a “spy or an actress.”

Her brother David told her that she “was so ugly, with a large ass and skin that was so white he could see right through it.”  (Her skin is delicate and pale, accentuating her long black hair and deep brown eyes — wounded eyes — and she does have a noticeable backside, but in congruence and alignment with her bust and hips.  Her lack of judgment in all matters has extended to her inability to recognize her physical attributes.)

David also told her that she’d been adopted, and for a long while, she consoled herself with the thought, until she could no longer deny her physical resemblance to both parents.

Her favorite relative, Uncle Lou, was a severe alcoholic who died in his late forties (a mysterious event, never fully explained, involving a rainstorm, the climbing of a telephone pole, and his subsequent electrocution).

Uncle Lou gave her a slim, delicate gold wristwatch on her fifteenth birthday, a slight gold chain at the latch, pearlized, dime-sized watch face — her most prized possession — and despite the recklessness of her life, she exhibited great pride in not having ever misplaced it.  (In fact, patient became quite upset when the nurse tried to unlatch it, and I was called to the room.  So insistent was patient on not removing the wristwatch in accordance with the hospital’s no jewelry rule, I understood immediately that by allowing patient to wear the wristwatch, she would trust me.  I convinced the staff to make an exception; they agreed on account of my trust theory based on the wristwatch’s emotional significance.)

Patient doesn’t know when she began to feel “unloved and unwanted” and as if a “great gaping hole was expanding and fluttering in my chest” but thinks that she was around five or six.  She believes that the feelings “didn’t come on suddenly but just kept growing bigger and bigger over time.”

A hostile form of penis envy was demonstrated at a young age, while taking a bath with her brother:  “David started screaming and when Mamma ran in, she saw that I was trying to pull his penis off.  I was leaned forward in the bathtub, my hands gripped around it, wouldn’t let go.  I wanted it off — it looked like some ugly outgrowth, like a long, skinny wart.  Mamma finally had to slap me.”

Her father was remote and a severe disciplinarian.  She sought his attention and was met with indifference.  She remembers being overjoyed one night when he “held my hand.  He was interested in me!  His hand was so big and mine was so small — it made me feel protected and loved.”

Later that same night, her father beat her with his leather belt for an infraction she can’t remember.

“All that closeness,” she says, “didn’t mean the same thing to him and seemed random.  I cried bitterly and he told me if I didn’t stop crying, he’d whip me again.”

Afterwards, she rarely exhibited manifestations of emotion — most of her suffering was done in silence — an example of “still waters running deep.”

One night, when patient was sixteen, she “came home after drinking with friends.  Papa was waiting, and Mamma and David were in my parents’ bedroom, hiding from what they knew would happen.  Papa had been fuming all evening.”

When she stumbled through the door, he was leaned against the wall, watching.  “I made it to my room, but each step was a struggle.”

She started to change her clothes, but her father grabbed her arm.  He was yelling and hitting her, and she ran into her parents’ bedroom, wearing her blouse and underwear, her father trailing behind her.

“I had a welt on my arm, and I was showing it to Mamma and David, but they didn’t know what to do.”

She left home three days later.

She admits that her subsequent pursuit of men seems an undisguised attempt at replacing her alienated father.

“A girl’s desire to please her father,” I tell her, “becomes a sort of guide map to all her other relationships with men.”

“Whatever you say,” she says, jocularly.  And then, with sincerity:  “You’re probably right.”

A certain unconscious destructiveness entered into her behavior, what I believe to be the initial seed of alcoholism.

Side note: When I try to analyze my own motives, I tend to brood on unrelated minutiae.  I see an apron my mother used to wear, with vines forking across it in an unnerving pattern; she leans over to kiss me when I’m in bed, her head over mine, her lips.  Sleepy, soft lips — an intake of breath as she comes closer to my face.  The caress of her breathing on my cheek.

The backs of her knees — pale and veined — as she walks to the lake’s edge, to swim.  Her large backside sways in a black-skirted bathing suit.

She’s in her brassiere, and her breasts seem like gobs of contained dough.

She argues with my father: fight, reconciliation; fight, reconciliation; fight, reconciliation.

One night from my bedroom I listen to the thump and thud of my father throwing her against a wall.  My subconscious desire for her, my obsession — a childhood romance?  I will protect you, Mother!  I am yours!  And she comes to my bedroom, reveals a bruise on her thigh the size of my father’s fist.

My heart is unreliable.  My mother incarnates into every woman — I am physically and spiritually connected to my maternal source.  I have all the characteristics of a classically Freudian childhood.  I did want to kill my father, marry my mother.

With age, both my mother and father have become complacent, placid — long games of bridge, walks around the neighborhood.

Sex Life

I, more than anyone, am fully aware of the dilemma — What came first: patient’s promiscuity or patient’s alcoholism?  I might as well be asking, What came first: the chicken or the egg? Much time was spent on the topic (I considered it a rare opportunity.  Patient was keen to observe that my attention seemed manic and obsessive).

I’m inclined to believe that the neurotic factors that produced her sexual promiscuity were aggravated and extended by alcohol, and that the continued use of the latter led to the progressive deterioration of her sexual morals.

Patient’s first incident of sexual intercourse was a profound disappointment: “The second his penis entered me, I thought, There must be more.”

At eighteen, patient was already experiencing blocks of time that she could not remember, what have been referred to as “blackouts,” but what patient prefers to call “time smears.”

On one such occasion, she had been drinking steadily, and found herself coming to “staggering at a sidewalk, near my parents’ home.”  She “caught a ride” with a group of men in a car, two that she recognized — local policemen.  “I was glad to see Jack and Frank because Jack always had something to drink.  I was already quite drunk, having trouble talking.”

There were two other men in the car and she got into the backseat with them.  “They were passing around a bottle and one of them had to hold it to my mouth and help me drink.”

They drove her to a hotel, and “someone opened the door and I went in.  No lights were turned on.  I didn’t know what was going to happen but had an idea, and for some reason, I put Uncle Lou’s wristwatch on the dresser by the bed.  All the time I was crying and begging and pleading.  I was shoved on to the bed.  One man held my arms; I couldn’t see in the dark; another man held my ankles and pulled my legs apart.  I had on my jacket and hat, which they didn’t bother to remove.  The door opened and some more men came in, and someone called, ‘Hey, Les!  We’re having ourselves a party’ and Les said, ‘Oh yeah?’ and I recognized his voice — he was Lester Mansfield, a friend of Papa’s.  I used to go to his farm when I was a kid and I would help him feed the chickens.  Although I had never called him anything but Mr. Mansfield, I cried out, ‘Les, Les!’  He recognized my voice because there was a thick sudden horrible silence.  Then my feet and arms were released and I got up.  As I was running to the door, I fell down and cut my knee.  Then I remembered Uncle Lou’s wristwatch, and I ran back and got it.  I didn’t look at Les.”

It occurred to me — as she pulled up her jumpsuit pant cuff to reveal the scar at her knee — that if and when released, patient would drink again, and more such occasions would happen.  A terrible responsibility came upon me, a tightening around my temples.  Patient moved her gaze to the fichus tree and a shock passed through me, like an electric current: Patient probably had other dealings that she wasn’t telling, similar to the one she had just described.  How many?  What wasn’t she telling me?  I saw clearly her insanity and believed that I must not let her out of the hospital.

There is a connection between the idea of irrevocable ruin and the ease with which she submitted to men.  While patient insists that “I never went out with the idea of having relations with a man — I wanted someone to understand me; I wanted to wake up in a different world where I was appreciated, and I wouldn’t have to be me.”

But she would inevitably find herself in rapid succession with various men.  She seems to place less value on her sex than many women do on blowing their noses or applying lipstick.  There are deeper unconscious motives at work — a masochistic self-revenge.

One of these men was a foreigner who practiced cunnilingus, and she felt that his willingness to perform such an action was a promise of “something more hopeful” between the sexes.

On another occasion, a salesman gave her a necklace after she permitted him to “put his penis in my mouth.”

His emission reminded her of “warm, yucky mud.”

She speculates that her promiscuity was a “desire for knowledge and understanding — a searching” and that she “hoped someday I would find a man who would help me reach a higher spiritual plane.  He would discover that I was sensitive, desirable, intelligent — he would recognize me and I would recognize him.”

“What do you mean by recognize?”

“He would discover himself in my presence, that’s the thing.  And I would recognize myself in him.”

During her six-month relationship with the bandleader, patient was able to remain monogamous.  It must be said for this cowardly man — a chronic alcoholic prone to extreme bouts of jealousy — that at the very least, he put an end to patient’s promiscuity.

Patient, at times, felt impelled to quiz me on my sex life.

“How many girlfriends have you had?”

“Three.”  This is a lie.  I’ve had one girlfriend.  Technically, I’m a virgin.

Patient nods her head, doesn’t challenge me.

“I was busy,” I say, “with school.”  I sit more upright; cough into my fist.  I compose my facial features, hoping to express virility.  “I’m the youngest doctor in the history of the hospital.”

“You’ve done very well for yourself,” she says.

She claims to have rarely experienced orgasms in connection with intercourse, instead relying on masturbation for gratification.  Describing her current masturbation practice: “I use my fingers to arouse desire and an irresistible urge comes along with it, originating inside, something like an itching sensation that longs for touch and friction — moist and slightly open.  When this urge comes, I press harder, until I can hardly stand it.  Afterwards, it throbs and pulsates, decreasing to calmness.”

Her experimentations began at age eight or nine, by using a pillow to “rub against” at night, before falling asleep.  “I thought I was very sinful and ugly and that if my parents ever found out, they’d disown me, maybe even kill me.  I felt so guilty and ashamed, but even though I suffered, I continued.  At night, with the lights off, I wanted to feel that pleasure again.”

Despite hearing that masturbation led to such problems as insanity and an extended, deformed vagina, she also experimented with a toothbrush handle, a Popsicle stick, and the eraser side of a pencil — but she soon realized that “nothing works quite as well as my fingers.”  (Statement made while looking directly at me.)

“I used to think I would go blind,” I say.

Patient laughs, not unkindly.

Side note: I am now faced with the indelicate, discouraging, and distasteful task of admission.  I lied.  I lied to patient, invented a story about the loss of my virginity.  In retrospect, I was discouraged by her sexual knowledge and wanted to appear more seasoned.

As I told her, she fiddled with the chain on Uncle Lou’s wristwatch.  Reality and fantasy merged — there was a maid, Hannah, and she did let me in her small bed when my parents were out late, which was often, because my father’s political career was on the rise and they had many nighttime engagements.

Hannah insisted we keep it a secret — but she didn’t have to convince me.  As a secret, it became more valuable.  The thrill of running back to my bedroom when we heard the stirrings of my parents coming home—once as close as a key turning in the lock of the front door — “Go, go, go!” Hannah would say.

Can you blame Hannah?  I was young and scared and lonely.  She was my savior.

She was not young, my Hannah, having been widowed in her late thirties, and come to work for us a few years after that, no children of her own — but she was small breasted and thin, so that she seemed young, like a boy almost, with curly dark hair and a mischievous face.

She smelled of milk and bread and all things from my childhood; and I would press against her in her bed, and she would let me, as if it were a game, and it was a game — a cuddling game.

But then I got older, and my pressing became more fervent.  And when she felt my hardness against the back of her, she said, “Oh, my!  You are getting to be a big boy, aren’t you?”

And about the sixth or seventh time it happened, she reached behind her with her hand and touched between my legs, stroked me — the weight of her fingers against the flannel of my pajama bottoms.

It was almost a curious gesture, as if she were checking to see how tall I had become, or looking inside my ear to decide whether the wax needed to be cleaned, but the feel of my pajama material lightly scratching against the skin — well, it was too much.

Within seconds, I had an eruption, and she must have felt it against her, because she sat up, a little startled.  She took a cloth rag, and patted it against the side of my damp pajama leg.

“Don’t worry,” she said, probably because my face was hot with shame.

Tears squeezed from my eyes, hysteria built inside my chest.  No one had warned me about emissions, and I was frightened.

“No,” Hannah said, gently admonishing me.  “No, honey, no.”

She’d never called me honey before, and I quieted, wiped my tears with my palm.

“It’s natural,” she said.  “Don’t cry, honey.  You’re a big boy, and someday you’ll be a man.”

Hannah continued to allow me in her bed after that, but never again did we play the cuddling game, and never again did she touch my groin, though it did continue to get hard, and I wanted her to touch me there, and I believe she was lonely and wanted to as well.

And then a year or so later, Hannah left our family to live with a cousin, but it wasn’t because of me.  Her cousin’s wife had passed away, and he needed Hannah to take care of his house and children.

In my telling version, Hannah is young, with a fiancé waiting for her, not a cousin, and she has apple-sized breasts and long straight hair; and she is lonely for her intended who lives far away; and she is sexually vibrant.

She teaches me about women, in the privacy of her bedroom, and the final lesson (intercourse — penetration) is repeated several times.

And then she leaves our home to be married.

This mirage of Hannah I had created for my private fantasy life, and the telling of it to the patient has since diminished its erotic powers.

Whether patient believed my story, she did me the service of listening with a mask of credulity.

My one relationship with a woman lasted three weeks; during that time, we adjusted ourselves to various modes of experimentation on a couch in the living room (I could never convince her to enter my bedroom).

She talked endlessly of the benefits of marriage: the sexual freedom, the shared spiritual and moral values, the regular meals and domestic rewards.

She was the daughter of a physician, and I would watch as she and her father played competitive games of chess; I was somewhat terrified of her, imagining her bringing those ruthless intellectual skills to matrimony.

In the heat of rock and grind on that couch, fully clothed, I might have easily proposed marriage, just for the removal of her undergarments, but she broke up with me before I had that chance.

Side note: Patient and I met in a window-less room with oatmeal-colored walls and a garish painting of a lighthouse, disturbingly large pelicans flying near purple-tinged water, signed in a yellow cursive by a Ms. Olga B. Johnson, a former patient with a diagnosis of severe depression, brought on, most likely, by her husband leaving her for his young secretary.

At the corner of the room was a fake fichus tree, plastic leaves coated with a light dust, in a wicker basket planter.

We often joked about this fake fichus — Violeta asking if I’d remembered to water it, and me replying, “Perhaps.”

It became a regular occurrence.

Violeta always chose the same position: sitting in a plastic chair, a few feet extended from oval-shaped table, her back to the painting.  She wore a pastel blue jumpsuit assigned to female patients.  Slight, pale brown birthmark at neck, near hollow of throat, in shape of swan.  She managed to make jumpsuit her own by folding sleeves at three-quarter length and pants below her knees.  After inquiry, I was informed that what I smelled was a perfume called L’air Du Temps.

As soon as she sat, she took off her slippers (“I prefer being barefoot.  Don’t you?”), and throughout our conversations, she leaned forward and stared at me.  Left eye slightly elevated above right, centimeter-sized scar at arch of eyebrow (she doesn’t remember how she got it).

She sat with legs crossed, switching up every fifteen minutes or so.

Twice she assumed a masculine posture, legs parted, taking up space (the first, taking offense at the standard question of whether she’d been dropped on her head as a baby; the second, during aggressive questioning by patient regarding my own rather uneventful sex life).

She had a marked sense of humor, but even when she laughed, she appeared sad (wounded eyes, as noted earlier).

Careful not to have physical contact with patient, I was decidedly unsuccessful, unprofessional: I held her hand across the table four times (her fingers were cold, she made no effort to remove my hand), and once I brushed hair from her face (a strand was caught between her eyelashes).

We watched movies in the recreation room, sitting side by side in foldout chairs, close enough so that our thighs sporadically touched.  Singin’ in the Rain, The Searchers, Some Like it Hot.  The movie reel spun and clanged and the other patients often slept and snored.  But we stayed awake, and occasionally, during a funny scene, she would look at me, share it with me, and laugh — a naked, full laugh.

Once, I placed my right hand beside her and left it there, hoping she might put hers in mine.  Then I felt ashamed, and removed it.

“You think you understand me,” she says, “but you don’t.”

“I want to understand,” I say.

“I’m too much for you,” she says.  “Too much for anyone.”

“I’m the doctor,” I say.

“I’m like water pouring too fast into a glass.”

“What do you mean?”

“The water goes so fast, you have to pull the glass away; and in the end, the glass holds less water than it can contain.”

Sometimes our conversations held a light-hearted quality — possibly as a natural escape from intensity of psychoanalysis.

We spoke of books and movies and other things, even of our childhoods, but in a carefree way.

We hummed songs, tried to remember lyrics.  Her favorite song was “Stardust” and once, she sang part of the lyrics in an endearingly shaky voice, eyes downcast:

And now the purple dusk of twilight time

Steals across the meadows of my heart.

High up in the sky the little stars climb,

Always reminding me that we’re apart.

Her intelligence and sensitivity were markedly superior.  On one occasion, patient made observation regarding my appearance.

“You’re funny looking,” she says, fingering an earlobe.

“Thanks.”

She laughs, not unkindly.

“It’s the glasses,” I say.

More laughter.

“My haircut.”

Shakes her head, laughter.

“My nose.”

“You’re sweet,” she says.

Summary and Conclusion

Doctor Robert H. Lockney, on witnessing my despair, noted (off the record): “Every one of us has a case like this — that one case, that one woman, that gets to you.  Maybe we think we’re in love.  But it passes.  And you go on, and your career goes on.”

Violeta was not incapable of sound reasoning — a woman of considerable intelligence and sensitivity.  Alcohol alone furnishes insufficient explanation for such a lack of common sense.

“I need it,” she says.  “I need it badly.”

A natural transference did not take place; she could not freely submit to me; therefore she couldn’t master her symptoms, which led to a further repression of her true feelings.

I am filled with confusion.  Something of her hovers in the air—her presence lingers.  Her disappearance strikes me as a violation, almost a breach of faith.  However much I analyze this situation — to figure me out, to figure Violeta out — I have within me a vast chaos.

The trouble with my longing is that it gives me the habit of nonproductive long bouts of brooding.

Certain things I remember, but others things are discolored by my needs.  Most of the details are already rearranging and transforming to suit me.  What is counterfeit and what is real?

But there are certain details that hold fast, that won’t let me alter them, insistent.

As noted in my preliminary statement, Violeta’s final meeting included a “vitriolic attack” but on further consideration, it was more of a plaintive, philosophical speech.

“All I want,” she says, “is to be left alone.  You’re keeping me here because you think you can control me.  I already know all the reasons why I drink but it doesn’t stop me.  I’m very self-aware, and it’s done nothing.  I’m only going to let you down.  You know nothing.  Nothing!  Looking at me with those eyes, thinking you’re helping.  You’re only making me feel worse.  Leave me alone!”

It was at this point that I noticed she wasn’t wearing Uncle Lou’s wristwatch but I was too distressed to ask why.  I’m not sure what I said, caught in the adrenaline.  I simply can’t remember.

In desperation, an offer of a possible future matrimony was made.  (This information was not presented to my superiors, nor was it requested.)

“You can get better,” I say.  “We could be happy.”

Did I mean it?  Was it a last effort?  Even now, my heart races at the opportunity, a sweat breaks at my temples.  A flush of shame.  By marrying me, could patient not thereby solve her alcoholic problem?  Could she escape the binds of a society that offered her no solution?  Could I recognize her, put an end to her search?  Could she recognize me?  To which patient exclaims, rightfully so, “Are you crazy?”

“But I love you,” I say.  (I remember this part.)

No answer.  Long pause.

“You’re lonely,” she says.  “You need a girlfriend.”

“Maybe,” I concede.  “Maybe.”

“I don’t love you,” she says, looking straight at me — cold, coldness.

And I believed her.  A shameful relief passed through me, even as my throat constricted.

But later, after she disappeared, I found Uncle Lou’s wristwatch dangling off a branch in the fichus tree, where I wouldn’t miss it.

“Drift” was named one of three finalists for the 2010 Story Prize and named one of 2009’s 100 best books by the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Patterson’s unflinching account of the seedy side of a real-life Xanadu is frightening, immersive and wonderfully realized,” said Publishers Weekly in a starred review.

Her essays and fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Orange Coast Magazine, the Southern Review, Santa Monica Review and the Florida Review. 

Her short story “Johnny Hitman” was listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories in Best American Short Stories 2009. 

Patterson lives with her family in Southern California, and teaches through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. 

Visit her online at www.victoriapatterson.net.

They’d considered the child and kept themselves circumspect. For her sake they had been in love, but quietly. Angela had lost a father, she was only eight, she would need stability and to feel herself the centre of attention for a while. Lynne had been clear about this from the start — her daughter should be allowed time to adjust.

Jesus, they all of them had to adjust.

Barry Westcott, much-loved entertainer, goes to work one evening and then doesn’t bring himself home. Vein burst in his head — vein, or an artery, his widow often cannot think of which — and out he goes. Found in his car. Key in the ignition, but he’d managed no further than that, which was a kind of miracle, or at the very least, a good thing — Lynne didn’t want to imagine what damage he might have done if he’d started driving.

He’d made a remarkably natural-looking corpse. Natural for being dead. This meant he’d developed a bad colour — bluish-grey — mainly, though, he’d seemed puzzled and as if death had interrupted when he’d been just about to speak. The important thing was, there had been no injuries, or chains of subsequent accident and this could definitely be taken as having turned out for the best. Now people could think well of him, could let themselves enjoy unspoiled regret on his behalf, as they might like to. The press reports were kind and helpful, if rather small: “Creator and voice of Uncle Shaun dies at 42. Widow speaks of fresh horizons tragically closed.”

This being how Lynne moved from Barry Westcott’s wife to Barry Westcott’s widow — not even the tiniest interval left between the two for independent life. And the transition accomplished entirely without her assistance. She never felt a thing.

Angela — perhaps permanently Barry Westcott’s daughter — had, of course, been up and about the following morning with everything seeming usual and keeping quiet in case she woke her tired and grumpy actor dad and clearly supposing that she would see him when she came in again from school, oblivious to the phone calls and rushing and uniforms on the doorstep of the night before.

Angela has usually slept deeply and well. She lost the trick of it a little in the months right after, but it’s back at the moment, she’s mending. She has also forgiven, or chooses not to mention, that Lynne let her leave the house on that first Barryless day and spend so many hours unknowing, ungrieving, before the sadness was explained to her after dinner, her loss. It had been on the local news by lunchtime — then a slight delay and more national attention. That delay, it wouldn’t have pleased Baz. Had he been still alive, ratty calls to the PR — Nina? Tina? — would have ensued: escalating complaints every twenty minutes until matters were resolved to his satisfaction. But, as Lynne had repeated to herself quite forcibly, this was the point of the coverage in the first place — Barry Westcott wasn’t still alive.

It had struck her as peculiar that the announcement had seemed definitive when it was coming from a slightly tarty redhead in a studio and yet she hadn’t found herself remotely credible when she’d tried to lay things out for Angela. The available information had not seemed realistic and somewhere in Lynne there had been a distracting certainty that she was inappropriately uninvolved. To be frank, it had been the sensible, the loving, choice to let a regional broadcaster summarise the changes in their household with an appropriate solemnity and some nice archive clips: Barry at a children’s hospice, Barry standing in a line-up of dinner suits and shaking hands with Princess Michael, Barry in motion and then frozen as a permanently jovial and poignant close-up. Once she’d switched off the set, Lynne was surprised — not unpleasantly — by the start of her crying. The two remaining Westcotts had curled and snuggled with each other on the sofa for a while — Barry’s brave girls, united in heartbreak.

Since their tragic and unexpected bereavement Angela and her mother — Lynne is also the mother of Barry Westcott’s child — have settled into living somewhere delicate and withdrawn. They do not watch their television, because Angela no longer wants to, they have a number of extremely firm routines, are considering a kitten or a pup and they receive visitors who are markedly undemonstrative.

Primarily there has been one visitor who is called Richard. He is your mum’s pal.When Angela is awake he only — and fairly infrequently — kisses Lynne on the cheek, or maybe squeezes her hand for a moment or says her name, “Lynne” — no more than that — and then, having caught her attention, he will let his eyes smile. His eyes are extraordinarily, professionally eloquent: the whites very white, the depths very deep. Lynne and Richard work hard to give no indication that Angela’s mother — Barry’s widow — is loved again.

Perhaps loved better than before.

Undoubtedly.

Undoubtedly loved better than at any other time before.

She would admit this, if anybody asked, and she knows that eventually they may ask: the large and curious they which is waiting outside in its hungry limbo, waiting to tell people who she is, who Richard is: papers, radio, magazines, television — so much telling.

Part Two

At present, she and the girl are still insulated — just living as normal a life as possible — Lynne is proud of the neat protection she has built up for them both. And behind their little walls they do enjoy themselves. There have been trips when mother and daughter could share being puzzled by monstrous constructions in Lego bricks, or slightly unnerved by fancy-dress horsemen who plunged solemnly across the grounds of several castles and a stately home — each property filled with significant information and portraits of the neither recently nor disturbingly deceased. Or once there was that place where a man sold them honey and candles and furniture wax and showed off by spreading his face with a beard of bees. Angela and her mother have agreed that he was not educational, only mad. A lot of mad.

Having provided, with Richard’s help, a number of increasingly successful excursions, Lynne has found herself looking forward to more, identifying a definite rise of excitement before packing up the car with drinks and Just William CDs and carrot sticks and hand wipes and setting the satnav to somewhere she has never been. When she giggles and runs across lawns holding Angela’s hand, or waits in ice-cream queues, she no longer hears an interior voice attempting to undermine her — this isn’t you, this is sad pretending, this is absurd.

Sometimes — as is reasonable and could be expected — the pair of them have welcomed company, they have been Angela, Lynne and Richard, enjoying treats. Richard happened to be around for Angela’s particularly lavish eighth birthday party, the one intended to make up for the blank and hurt the year before. He played his guitar and sang for a while, performing with more authority than a normal, casual person should, but the kids all liked it because he was self-effacing, too, which was a difficult balance to strike, Lynne had thought. She had watched him and decided that. She had been impressed.

Richard had also appeared some evenings to talk about work, about the series, and to maybe stay for dinner. Eventually, he started to provide the bedtime story, oversee tooth brushing, get a kiss on the cheek before he stood up from perching on Angela’s bed and turned out the light. He would never be there in the morning, though, would never give the impression he had spent his night mostly in Lynne’s bed — formerly Barry Westcott’s bed — running himself into hard hours, fierce and jerking hours, that pelted in after days of murmuring and politeness and knowing exactly, planning exactly, how they would end up. Not that they really kept to any plans — it was just ridiculously wonderful to make them, talk about them, consider possibilities.

And then at breakfast there would be no observable suggestion of the way they would hunt each other down to the bone in a tight, wet, beautiful agreement, or of his mouth so very open above her. Lynne was perfectly satisfied that Angela could eat her cereal with the lovely sliced banana on top after a sound and innocent sleep — Lynne and Richard were careful not to bang about or shout — and the mother could stand and watch the daughter and silently feel remade with good little private bruises, with resurrected skin.

“Is Richard coming today?”

“I don’t know, love.”

“I like it when he reads to me.”

“Do you?”

“Does he read to you?”

“No, he doesn’t read to me. That’s special for you.”

“We’re at the part where the snow’s all melting and the witch can’t go to anywhere because her sleigh gets stuck and she’s immensely irritated.”

“Immensely irritated?” Lynne unable to resist stroking Angela’s shoulder at this — another example — which she will talk about to Richard — of how her offspring grows every day slightly more into a remarkably fine person — this happening with no apparent help from anywhere, more a slow uncovering of inherent qualities than anything learned or dictated. “Is that right?”Another kind of miracle. “Well, an immensely irritated witch would be a problem.”

“Richard says he’s never read it before and I don’t want him to miss it. Could you phone him and ask? If he’ll come?”

“I’ll phone in a while. I think he’ll be sleeping now.”

“He’ll still be in bed?”

“Yes. He’ll probably still be in bed.”

“In his pyjamas?”

These unpredictable moments when she loved her daughter to the point of pain, “That would be a silly place to have a bed — in his pyjamas . . . You’ll have to ask him yourself if he wears pyjamas. He might have a nightgown instead, or a suit of armour.”

“But when you phone him you will order him to come here. If he’s not busy with other people.”

Other people is pronounced with mild but unmistakable disapproval. It refers to everyone but Angela and Lynne. And Richard.

“Order him?”

“Yes.”

“We can’t order him, he’s a friend.”

“Oh—”

“But I’ll ask. Now finish your cereal before it goes to mush.”

“It’s mush now. I like mush.”

Which was the first Lynne had heard of this. Maybe the preference was recent. People did change, after all — if they were lucky.

Lynne had been lucky.

Eventually.

Recently.

She had finally found her luck.

Part Three

In the beginning, Lynne and Richard were solely connected by business concerns. To be ruthlessly truthful, they never would have met without Barry — or rather, without Barry’s lack.

Barry had died at an inconvenient time, professionally speaking. No one mentioned this in so many words, but it was there in the condolence calls from the various offices, which didn’t fade and leave her be, but simply changed over the weeks into small remarks about Uncle Shaun having suddenly made a breakthrough: the books were really selling and so were the tapes, listening figures were great for the radio version and it would be another tragic waste — a minute one, but significant nonetheless — if they didn’t somehow try to continue the brand’s momentum. There was still serious enthusiasm for a television pilot, they didn’t want to let that go: new series, new format, new medium — they were considering possibilities.

Barry hadn’t wanted TV exposure, not as Uncle Shaun. In his opinion the audio versions were bad enough. By the end of Shaun’s first year, Baz had been loudly and repeatedly tired of doing kids’ stuff. But Uncle Shaun paid for the house, for Angela’s schooling, for the green vintage Aston Martin from which paramedics would ultimately lever his body, so Barry persevered. He also made repeated efforts to catch the right kind of famous — he’d been playing in The Caretaker when he died, reminding the public of his full capacity. Respectable reviews.

This meant Barry would have found it amusing that without him there might be no more Uncle Shaun. However much he’d hated the character Barry had kept it close. He’d started writing the stories for Angela when she was three or four, maybe older — this was another set of details Lynne could not reliably recall. Barry had polished his versions and sent them out for publication when there’d been no money coming in, not even from voice-overs, not even from those bloody awful eye-drop ads. It was the first and only occasion when one of his bouts of creative despair bore fruit. The books were accepted and prospered. The audio versions had come along when they needed a replacement boiler and Barry had, despite himself, furnished a voice for the nation’s favourite uncle. He had, indeed, been every voice: Bill Badger, the Llamas, Mr. Pearlyclaws, everyone. Another demonstration of capacity.

But he wouldn’t do telly.

With Barry, there was Shaun, but no telly.

Without Barry — no Shaun, but telly not a problem.

Being dispassionate, then: all that was needed would be another Shaun.

No one absolutely said this out loud—it simply became apparent, rose to the surface of every Shaun-related conversation and floated. Lynne pictured it bobbing and drifting,maybe slightly like her daughter’s goldfish when it died.

Pets are always a serious undertaking, prone to calamities which may precede the recapitulation of older griefs — that’s why the puppy and kitten options were still undecided. Richard was in favour, Lynne was unsure.

Lynne — dead Uncle Shaun’s widow — did not express an opinion on the search for some fresh, theoretical Shaun and she didn’t observe the auditions, because she’d assumed that would have been grotesque. She chose to be aware that they were taking place and to acknowledge that financial security was important, especially in unstable times. She was responsible for Angela’s future. Lynne had, naturally, been a performer herself in her twenties, but she had no illusions about her talents, and even the finest actresses could find middle age a hurdle: not cute and young, not cute and old: you were grown up, that was all — and nobody wants that. Uncle Shaun would have to provide.

The production company sent her Shaun hopefuls on cassettes, to which she didn’t listen. They also sent her DVDs, at which she didn’t look. And then, for a while, there were more calls and a few letters, which mentioned how irreplaceable Barry might perhaps turn out to be. Lynne felt she agreed with this, should almost tell them — yes, Barry was Barry and no one else. Barry with the fake face for parties, Barry who loved to flirt, Barry who was scared, who was utterly terrified, that having a child would mean he couldn’t leave Lynne if he wanted, couldn’t upgrade, couldn’t be comfortable with moving on. She’d understood this immediately in the hospital, in their first post-natal, post-paternal encounter. Barry Westcott, he was one of a kind.

A kind she’d been supposed to like. If you could no longer love, she had reasoned, you should try to like. Curiously, liking had been much more difficult to achieve.

Barry had offered her a child as a consolation for his inability to love her. (Liking was also beyond him.) In order to shore up something that couldn’t stand, they had made a person: a complete, living human being. Reckless addition, that — no idea what they’d both been thinking — if they had, in fact, been thinking.

Although, Lynne had been thinking: otherwise, she wouldn’t have stared at her husband as he first picked up his daughter, hefted her tenderly, gracefully, feelingly — so the nurses could not help but remember the scene, believe it — and she had thought — Got you. She’d seen his eyes: the wide, unfamiliar chill that was settling in them and she had thought — Got you. Fuck you. Deal with that.

It had surprised her—that she would allow someone else to exist simply to defeat her husband. Then she forgot about it. When you come across something this unusual, this far out of your character, you’re best to forget.

Anyway, it was no longer true and therefore didn’t matter.

And eventually Shaun might not matter, not to anyone but her — that’s how it had seemed. The messages of irreplaceability became more insistent, apologetic, and then dropped away entirely.

Lynne had assumed that the multimedia hopes for her husband’s other creation were being laid aside. There would, no doubt, be efforts to exploit what material there was, but in the absence of further storylines, of the voice, of the man himself, then everyone’s options were severely limited.

Until that final package had arrived.

Part Four

When she picked it up off the hall floor, honest to God, it weighed oddly, gave an impression of internal mobility, like holding on to something when it flinches, blinks. The usual company label was there on the usual type of padded envelope and the usual cheap plastic boxes were inside holding the discs — audio and video recordings.

The slip enclosed read — We really think he’s it. Our Shaun. We would be so delighted if you agree.

Richard was on the discs.

Richard Norland.

First time she’d seen the name.

He’d done other work, but she’d missed it.

She’d missed him.

Her intention had been to do some ironing, dissipate the tension that had apparently started cluttering the edges of every room — and this would allow her to hear the thing without feeling too uncovered, too close.

Except that didn’t work.

Not remotely.

Because she’d pressed play and heard her husband’s voices, his exact voices, reproduced — those silly, for-children voices, only they were better — there was somebody inside them, running about inside them and finding unexplored lights and fresh corners and a joy they’d never had, never delivered.

Made her cry.

Made her happy.

Didn’t make her miss Barry.

Sitting down — couldn’t remember dropping to a chair, but she must have done — sitting down and hearing a type of unnecessary beauty being threaded into something of her past — the iron, meanwhile, ignored and tinging, breathing steam — not a chance of her doing anything but listening until the talking stopped.

That was “Uncle Shaun and the Living Fish Tree,” read by Richard Norland.

His own words those, his personal sound, with the tone of a bedtime story, the idea of lips that were close, next to your ear. Soft as trust. Fearful as trust.

Not that you’d trust some actor you don’t know who’s good at impersonating a total bastard.

This a sensible time to grab up the iron and harry some pillowcases flat, move on to the sheets. She’d laughed at herself then, for being idiotic, trying to work up a crush based on the speech patterns of a ghost.

Still, the guy was good, you had to admit it — ideal. He’d avoided those sharp little inflections that used to signal how disgusted her husband was by the burden of entertaining children. Mr. Norland had greatly improved upon that.

She’d waited another day to watch the DVD, partly in case it disappointed — but mainly because she was sure it would not and then where would she be?

Somewhere silly and hormonal.

A response to bereavement.

Or else somewhere I have never been and might like to go — no preparations, no map.

Because why not?

For once, why not?

There being no reason why not that she could find, she spent the following afternoon with her computer in a dimmer and dimmer living room as the day surrendered into a pewter sheen and then left her and she watched a man plainly demonstrate that being alive was something not everyone did well, or even adequately. On the DVD Richard Norland was working without working — something she’d never been able to do, that Barry had never been able to do — Richard had the knack of visibly racing to meet with the best of himself: no caution, no reserve, no need to please — he made himself an indisputable fact.

Lynne had wondered if there was such a thing as a beautiful fact.

She played the DVD a number of times.

Once Angela had eaten, done her homework, gone to bed, Lynne had emailed a response to the producers. She assured them, in general terms, that she was pleased Shaun seemed to be in such good hands. She suggested that, should Mr. Norland wish, they might get together, discuss things. There would be matters to discuss.

There were days when this seemed insane.

There were days when she was certain this was insane.

There were no days when she wasn’t going to attempt it — seeing him.

If he wanted to see her.

Which, it turned out, he did.

He sent an email. Formal. Polite. Anachronistically polite.

Perhaps he was pompous, pretended to be intellectual, was an arse.

No harm done if it fell flat, which it was likely to.

But you have to try.

She checked his CV a few days before they were due to meet — in case they had something in common she should know about — or to feed the necessary small talk — or to check if he might be likely to be an arse — or to work out that at certain times he was ten years younger than her and at others only nine. A single-figure difference was okay.

Not that she’d been projecting.

She’d been pretending, playing. That was permissible, natural.

Telling myself a bedtime story. Nobody else here to do it.

Part Five

She’d invited him up to her house. This made sense, was logical. She would feel secure in her own home — previously Barry Westcott’s ranch-style country retreat — and she’d asked Mr. Norland to arrive at three thirty so that, should he turn out to be mostly illusory, no more than a bundle of skills, Angela would come in from school before the situation got too awkward and be reason enough to send him packing.

When Richard had appeared — five minutes early and with a pot plant held tight in big-knuckled hands — there was no trace of Barry when he spoke, but also not much of the softness she’d liked in the recording. He’d seemed nervous and was, as might have been hoped, smaller and quieter than he’d been in the audition. He’d worn an ugly brown pullover that she didn’t see again and which gave the impression he was slightly thick around the middle.

Actually he is, but only very slightly.

Smoothed-looking face, rounded, with a heavy jaw and those clever eyes — measuring, judging, flickering about — then settling, studying. Lynne had, in their initial hour, a good many opportunities to study him back, because their conversation didn’t flow. Eventually, they stared at each other. With no particular interest. Minutes passing limply. Lynne babbled for a while about Barry’s career, of all things, and noticed she was inserting the word obviously into virtually every sentence.

They peered at each other some more.

They stopped drinking their cold tea.

Angela saved them. Her additional presence edged Richard into grinning, then joking, then talking to the mother through the daughter, to the daughter through the mother, letting everyone hide themselves enough to feel safe.

They decided they’d eat dinner together — might as well, there was enough for three — Lynne still calculated their food for three — and then it was Angela’s bedtime and there was also the noise of Richard doing something — from the clatter, probably an unanticipated culinary something, which was slightly alarming — while Lynne was trapped upstairs in going through the evening drill and Angela complained about having to sleep when interesting events might be unfolding.

“It’ll be boring. Grown-up stuff. Business. Yes, it will. Close the eyes and go to sleep, you’ve got gym tomorrow.”

Down in the kitchen, Richard had been busy. “Hi.”

“I’d thought you were washing up.”

Two dishevelled mugs had been set on the work surface. He’d picked one up and held it out to her, left the handle free and let his fingers suffer the heat. “No. I was making cocoa. And more washing-up.” There was a sense of him leaning forward in this and seeing what she would say.

“Great. I never can get enough washing-up.” She took the mug.

Richard flapped his hand to cool it and stared towards the window and its bluish dark. “If you have any we could throw in a dash of brandy, or rum or something and be grown-ups. Or leave it alone and just be kids.”

“We’ll leave it.”

“Okay.”

They’d wandered through with their childish drinks and sat on the sofa in front of a television with a disconnected aerial.

“Why don’t you sell it, then? Or give it to someone?”

Lynne hadn’t answered. She’d been thinking — he’s nothing like a total bastard. That’s a promising start. She was already constructing the ways they might say goodnight.And then halting the construction. And then starting it up.

They parted that night — as she’d predicted several times — with a hug: an initial hesitation and then a firm, slow, unthreatening embrace. She’d realised they were both testing what it meant, prolonging the contact out of caution, rather than desire. There was a tiny change of pressures and emphasis as he said, “Thanks. That was a great evening.”

“No trouble.”

“We didn’t really talk that much about Shaun.”

“Some other time.”

He’d drawn back at this, held her shoulders with both palms. “Okay. You’re on. I’ll write down some points we should cover and bring them with me.”

*   *   *

“That’ll be fine.”

Their progress had been infinitesimally slow, partly because Richard had been dating someone else and only gradually sabotageing what was left of that relationship by obsessing about Shaun — how would he dress, what would be his best haircut, even making notes towards fresh plot lines. He was also spending regular evenings with Lynne — Uncle Shaun finding a new lease on life.

It had taken them nearly a year for Lynne to finally hear him as she’d intended, to lie with his breath against her neck and the hot surprise of word after word slipping into her arteries, her veins, she didn’t mind which.

This being how Lynne became Uncle Shaun’s lover for the first time.

Obviously, this was an arrangement that not everybody would understand. There might be questions that Lynne didn’t feel like answering if their situation became public and so they delayed, kept themselves exclusively to themselves.

What we are is mine, is ours and no one else’s.

And is what Angela needs.

The other evening Lynne had been passing her living room, the door open and Richard and Angela inside, intent.

“Do you want The Magician’s Nephew or The Silver Chair — which do you think?”

“I don’t mind. You pick.”

“This one, then.”

They’d been standing at the window, no lights on and the sunset beyond them, catching them with edges of light: one tallish shadow and one short.

“But could you say a bit of ‘Love and the Moon’ first? Like about a page of it? Now? Could you?”

Neither figure moved.

“You want me to do ‘Uncle Shaun and Love and the Moon’? Really?”

“Yes. And if . . . with the way you say it.” The child touching Richard’s arm, sliding her hand lower to hold his.

“Are you sure you want me to?”

“Yes.”

A fury of purple and yellow at the sky’s foot and her daughter turning to look up at a face.

“ ‘Badger Bill wasn’t there. Uncle Shaun had been looking for him all day, but he still wasn’t there.’ ” A dead voice risen.

Lynne had moved on as gently as she could, so as not to interrupt them. She’d gone into the kitchen to make cocoa.

When she’d returned to Angela and Richard they’d been sitting alongside each other, the girl’s head resting against the man’s chest as if she was about to sleep.

Lynne paused and watched them and made certain that she thought — This is the way we were always meant to be.

Her novels include “Day,” “Everything You Need,” “So I Am Glad,” “Paradise” and “Looking for the Possible Dance.”

“Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains” won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award.

“Day” won a Saltire Award, the Costa Prize, the Eifel Literaturpreis and the Austrian State Prize For International Literature. The New York Review of Books caled “Day” “a novel of extraordinary complexity,” and New York magazine chose it as one of the top 10 novels of 2007.

She has twice been chosen one of Granta’s best young British novelists, and in 2007, won a Lannan Literary Award.

Kennedy lives in Glasgow and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at the University of St. Andrews.

Visit her online at www.a-l-kennedy.co.uk.

Last night, George Washington, The First President of Our Great Nation (president, 1789-1797), fucked me three times. Now I know, I know: This is not a feminist thing to say. So before I get any hate mail from Luce Irigaray or her minions, let me rephrase: Last night I fucked George Washington, The First President of Our Great Nation (president, 1789-1797). Three times. And it wasn’t just him; that’s just how it started. Soon, I noticed there were two other men in bed with us: Harry Truman (president, 1945-1953) and Calvin Coolidge (president, 1923-1929). I didn’t see them arrive, but all of a sudden they were there, and in their underwear. I will only say this: The whiteness of their bellies shocked me. It is an alarming thing, being surprised by presidents in this way.

Harry’s glasses kept falling off, and Calvin put them back every time. The tenderness of the act made it seem like it could go on for a while. Calvin’s lips were constantly moving, and they seemed to form words but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. I think Harry could hear him, though, because every once in a while he’d laugh, or say something like ‘right,’ or ‘shut up.’ It’s embarrassing to admit, but they didn’t seem interested in me at all. They were a lot more into each other, and for a few seconds I thought maybe these were two different scenes (George and I, Harry and Calvin) that somehow ended up in the same bed, like telephone lines that got crossed. But then Harry started touching George and I realized it was an orgy after all. I’d never been in an orgy before (that time in high school doesn’t count, and I don’t want to get into that now), and I have to say I felt intimidated. I couldn’t remember how my evening with George even started, but I recalled it was gentle, honest. And I specifically remembered a moment when he looked at me and said, It’s just you and me, babe. Then he tried to slip his hand under my shirt, which embarrassed me because we were in a public place, but it was still a nice moment. Now all of a sudden two men that I didn’t even know (or know too much about – I never listened much in history class) were pleasuring him simultaneously, and I was feeling more and more unnecessary with every masculine moan.

At some point Harry said, I would like to play the piano now. George seemed taken aback, because they were in the middle of things, but Calvin said Oh, Harry plays so nicely, and seemed excited. This was the first time I could actually hear Calvin, and he had a beautiful voice, the kind that could easily land him a radio gig. In fact, it sounded a bit like he was already talking to us through a radio. I leaned toward George and whispered, He has such a unique voice. It is possible that I was simply trying to get George’s attention again. Coolidge has this thing with cigars, George whispered back, though it was clear to me that the other men could hear us; they make his voice beautiful. I smiled, and George said, Go figure, and shrugged. Do go on, please, Harry said to the men, suggesting he didn’t mind if they touched each other while he played. Then he looked at me. Would you mind it terribly if I played the piano? he asked. I found the whole discussion ridiculous, seeing as I didn’t own a piano. I was about to point that out when suddenly I realized that I did own one, because it was right there in front of me, facing the bed so you could sit on the mattress and play. And that is exactly what Harry did, not before motioning to the men to go on and waiting for them to take the queue. It took me a couple of minutes to realize he was doing some kind of cover for the national anthem. Oh, that’s just in bad taste, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

Now, I must admit, those men were virile. Their stamina did not go unnoticed, and if I gave that impression, I would like to correct it. But you have to understand: When a woman feels ignored, it is hard to remember that one’s always supposed to see the glass half full, focus on the beauty in every situation, maintain a positive attitude. I fell asleep.

This is probably something a boring person would do, and as a rule I try to avoid any such action, but there was not much for me to do, and I was pretty tired. When I woke up, Gerald Ford (president, 1974-1977) was on top of me. He wasn’t doing anything inappropriate, just trying to understand if I was indeed asleep. I guess you could argue he was subconsciously trying to wake me up. I said Gerald, when did you get here? and he seemed to take offense at the question. George said, What’s wrong with you, he was here the whole time. Then Lyndon Johnson (President, 1963-1969) came to my defense. The girl just woke up, he said, suggesting it made sense that I was confused. Don’t say ‘girl,’ I said; I’m a woman. That’s the whole feminism thing again – I feel strongly about that. You should know better, I said to Johnson, you were president in the sixties, for God’s sake. Then I felt bad. He was trying to defend me, and I attacked him in return. True, I resented his assumption that I needed his protection. That’s the problem with men in general, presidents in particular. But I knew that was no excuse for my behavior. I’m sorry, Lyndon, I said, and he nodded.

Harry and Calvin were gone. I wanted to ask George about it, but I was afraid he would say they were never there. So I said nothing and waited for one of the men to do something. While I waited, my thoughts started looping inside my head. That happens often when I’m anxious. It started with this thought about the very fact that I was waiting. That didn’t feel like a feminist thing to do. I felt that I was reinforcing, in my behavior, this whole idea that men are active hunters and women are passive containers. But I didn’t feel like initiating anything and, to be honest, the fact that these were presidents played into my reluctance as well: all that legacy is not something you can simply overlook when it comes to acts of a sexual nature. Then I thought of what Irigaray says in “This Sex Which is Not One” about women owning their sexuality, making love to other women, and even going on sex strikes to take back the power. That made me realize that initiating something would come with its own set of problems, and so maybe it was actually okay, from a feminist standpoint, to do nothing. Then I thought, well, they are in my bed, technically they’re my guests, so I am responsible for their happiness, but then I thought, there I go again, falling into the place of the stereotypical woman, the nurturer. This is what I mean when I say “loop.” Against my better judgment, I offered tea.

Part Two

Richard Nixon (president, 1969-1974) said black tea isn’t healthy. I was surprised he was there. He was sitting by the window and therefore out of my line of sight. Am I right or am I right, Leslie? he said, looking at Ford, and Ford pouted at him in return. C’mon, Leslie, don’t be like that, Nixon said, and Ford looked somber and said, Please stop calling me Leslie. Now, I know that this is not a polite thing to say, but having Nixon in my bed made me nauseated. It’s like everything he went through found its way into his face, and in every little wrinkle you could see corruption, deception. It is the kind of thing that immediately turns me off – I’m a very candid person. Additionally, he seemed sweaty.

I wanted to ask Nixon why he assumed I meant black tea, but since he wasn’t wrong I figured I might lose the argument. Who are you? I asked a man who was sitting on the floor playing with his necktie. My name is John Tyler, ma’am, he said. I was embarrassed – I’d never heard of him. I was president from 1841 to 1845, ma’am, he said, obviously reading my befuddlement. I was impressed: he clearly had well-developed people skills, and a shrewd eye for human behavior. That’s the kind of leadership this country needs, I thought.

Something about him made me think of birds. Do you like birds? I asked, and he said, It’s quite all right that you haven’t heard of me, ma’am, I get that a lot; people in this country have no respect for a little thing called Orderly Transfer of Power, but the truth is we’d be a mess without it. He looked at me and I assume he could see I had no idea what he was talking about. He took a deep breath and said, It’s what happens, for example, when a President dies and his Vice President takes over. Oh, I said. Does it bother you that people don’t remember you? I asked, and he said, It took me many years of therapy to be able to admit it, but yes, ma’am, it does. I gave him a look that said I wanted to know more, because I did. With most men, what happens when you say things with your eyes is that they don’t hear you. Not so with John Tyler. I’ll tell you the short version, ma’am, he said, but it will be long. I said, I’ve got time, just please stop ma’am-ing me, it makes me feel old.

When he started talking, the room fell silent. He was clearly the kind of man who holds a room the way other men put on underwear: easily, routinely. He talked for a long time, but I have to admit there’s much of his story I don’t remember. It’s just what happens to me when I’m in the presence of extraordinary public speakers, especially men: I find myself so fixated on the music, the presentation, that I forget to notice the words.

These are the details that I remember from John Tyler’s story, and please accept my apology if they are not in the right order or are incomplete: 1) Something about his therapist, and it sounded like the relationship wasn’t completely appropriate. 2) Something about his daughters, and I remember he seemed sad when he talked about it. 3) A recurring nightmare he used to have for years. I think that part constituted most of his story, and I remember it relatively well because the nightmare involved Washington’s farewell address, and John was doing a pretty solid imitation: “It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your collective and individual happiness.” (I looked at George: poker face.) John also imitated Ford at that point, although it had nothing to do with his story as far as I could tell; I think he just wanted to display his remarkable acting talent again: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” (I looked at Ford: he seemed angry.)

Then suddenly John looked somber and said, I will explain to you now what made me seek therapy. I could see this part was difficult for him to talk about, and it involved his running to the stage after Washington’s address, grabbing the microphone, and declaring himself president. Every time I would do the same thing, he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head slowly. Apparently the crowds ridiculed him, and things were thrown. Mockery is a damaging thing to a man’s character, he said quietly.

In all honesty, by the end of the story John Tyler sounded pretty whiny. Personally, I found it endearing, but I suspected the others did not. While he still had everyone’s attention, I could see the men moving slightly, like all of a sudden the bed or window wasn’t comfortable.

Well, I’ll be making coffee, then, I said, and headed over to the kitchen, because I felt a strong urge to cradle this man and assumed that would be inappropriate. Then I stopped; I wanted to tell Nixon that I would make him some green tea, to defuse the awkwardness between us, but I wasn’t sure that I had any left, and I wanted to avoid making promises I might not be able to keep. It was all John Tyler: he made me want to be a better woman.

Part Three

It turned out I did have green tea after all. I made coffee and tea, put various cookies on small saucers, and enjoyed the few minutes I had to myself. Being surrounded by powerful men can get suffocating. I do not know what the presidents talked about while I was gone. My apartment is pretty small, so I can say with certainty that there was no shouting. Other than that, I can attest for nothing.

When I came back to the bedroom, holding a heavy tray, only George was there. Now, I know — based on everything I said, I should have been happy. But the truth is, I was disappointed. My disappointment was in great part linked to the effort I’d put into the preparation of all the beverages and baked goods, and also to the interest I took in John Tyler, but if I’m completely honest, it also had a lot to do with sheer curiosity: I wanted to see what would happen next. Now there was nothing to be curious about anymore; it was just George and me. I was noticeably taken aback by the absence of the other presidents, but George did not seem to notice my distress or want to help me with the tray. He simply didn’t possess the observational skill that sweet John had displayed with so much tact and grace just minutes earlier. I felt frustrated, upset. But it seemed too early in the relationship to start some heavy conversation. Any of those ‘why didn’t you’ sentences would have obviously been out of place. I may not know much about men, but I do know that they have to fall completely in love before they can take even the slightest bit of criticism. And George Washington, Our First President, was clearly not in love with me. It was all about the sex for him.

I assumed the most casual tone of voice and asked, almost indifferently, Where did all the others go? What others, he said, and I swear to God, it pissed me off so much that had he been a normal guy I was sleeping with and not The First President of Our Great Nation, I would most likely have slapped him. This wasn’t the first time either: throughout the evening, he had this irritating habit of acting all innocent, pretending he had no idea what I was talking about, whenever it was time to be honest and open about something. Obviously, not boyfriend material. This naturally made me lose my façade. The others, George, I said, the other presidents who were here! I could see him hesitating, contemplating his next move. Should he flat out deny it like he’d done before, maybe come clean and explain, or possibly find a third way that was neither truth nor lie. I’m happy to report, our First President eventually chose the way of candor.

There was a huge brawl, he said. Republicans and Democrats? I asked, but he made a gesture that implied I was foolish even to suggest such a thing. Famous ones and not-so-famous ones, he said. I felt something like a hiccup in my heart: John. I wanted to know more, and waited for George to explain. I am quite ignorant when it comes to American history, and my ignorance was blocking any possible insight into the situation. I needed George’s help, but George would say nothing more. Can you be more specific? I asked. He didn’t answer. Not even a facial expression – nothing! It was the flatness only great men are capable of.

I changed my approach. How come I didn’t hear anything? I asked. If there was one thing I was sure about, it was the size of my apartment, the thinness of its walls. Baby, he said, and I found his tone condescending, these are not little boys you’re talking about, these are Presidents of the United States of America! If they don’t want you to hear something — you won’t. These were his exact words, and I’m quoting them here precisely as he said them, for liability reasons. Whatever happens, I do not wish to be held accountable for something I feel I had no control over, and by that I include all the events that transpired that night: those I have described, and those I have not yet mentioned.

Then he said, Babe, I got rid of them just for you, great men each and every one of them, now show me some love. I wanted to say, Don’t bullshit me, George, you didn’t get rid of them, you just told me what happened; and I wanted to say, I didn’t even want them gone, not anymore; and I really wanted to say, You  misogynist asshole, George, you really think just because I’m a woman I’ll buy into that crap? But instead, I let him fuck me again. There was something about his presidential masculinity that drew me. And as much as I would like to say that I fucked him (for reasons previously mentioned), it would not be an accurate account of what happened.

Part Four

But then all of a sudden George stopped altogether. I think he was having a hard time climaxing. He said, I’m having a hard time climaxing. Out of respect for The First President of Our Great Nation, I will skip the awkward conversation and the gory details and tell you what happened next, which was the oddest of the night’s occurrences: I pleasured him the way he asked, which mainly involved tickling  repeatedly in thirteen different spots, and he eventually exploded in a burst of some presidential liquid that had the taste and smell of rust.

Now, let me be clear: when I say ‘exploded’ I mean that literally. The strong scent of rust is my last memory of a moment when things seemed more or less all right with the world. Because only seconds later, I realized that the liquid around me was all that was left of Our First President. I wish I could say there was a big bang, something that would honor his memory. But the truth is that it happened just as I told you: one minute I was pleasuring him, the next there was no one to pleasure. Now, I know I’m a good lover. I mean, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and let’s just say for me that’s a definite strength. But no one is that good, and I don’t think that I should have to bear responsibility. I admit that that was my first thought – could it have been my fault? I know you’re probably thinking that’s not a productive way to react, that I wasted time, that you would have been more selfless. So let me just say, we all have some heroic idea of ourselves functioning flawlessly under pressure, but these ideas almost never materialize. And unless you’ve ever sexually tickled a president to death, I suggest you pass no judgment on me.

When I decided, finally, that I could not have been at fault, I looked around the room, afraid of what I might see next. And boy, was I right to be afraid. The organs and limbs of Our First President were scattered all around my bedroom. To my surprise, there was no blood anywhere. But the poor guy had simply been dismantled. What seemed to be his liver was dangling from the window, right next to where Nixon had sat earlier. His lungs stuck together, luckily, and both were somehow glued to the closet. His fake teeth kept opening and closing, making a clicking sound. And his heart, his heart! was just lying there on the carpet, as if it were an old sock that never made it to the hamper.

I realize that many might criticize me for being sentimental when faced with such an emergency. So to those I say: criticize me not, because if ever there was a moment I was proud of, it is the one that came next. Perhaps this was some kind of divine intervention and not my own doing, but I feel proud nonetheless. Even though I never went to med school, never even dissected a frog and always got C’s in Biology, suddenly, as I was looking around the room, spotting more and more parts of Our First President, I realized I knew what to do. And I did. I would probably not be able to repeat my actions if I needed to, but that’s not important.  At that moment, something strong was operating through me – the same thing I always believed the truly great leaders of the world had access to in times of crisis. And that thing sure knew what it was doing: I put Our First President back together in less than three minutes!

I was working quickly, efficiently, but midway through the second minute, I suddenly stopped, not knowing why. Awoken from this trance, I was once again able to see the organs for what they were, instead of Lego pieces for which my brain seemed to hold the instructions. I looked down: a diaphragm was resting in my hand. I knew it held some kind of answer, but I didn’t know to what question. I wanted to direct the question to it, but felt stupid for thinking a diaphragm could talk. Then I noticed it was shaking. At first I thought it was my own hand causing the tremble, but I soon realized that wasn’t the case. The diaphragm was clearly trying to tell me something, and I felt inadequate for not being able to decipher its message. I looked at it and thought, what if it holds emotional truths? What if most of us hold our emotional truths in our diaphragms and not in our hearts as many believe? I remembered John Tyler and suddenly it all seemed to make sense: he, of course, was no stranger to this fact, and when I first saw him, what I perceived to be a man playing with his tie was actually a man involved in the act few men ever practice: getting in touch with one’s feelings.

I knew then that I’d stopped because I couldn’t go on, because to place George Washington’s diaphragm back into him would be an injustice of which I could not be part. I’d obviously been given an opportunity to make a difference, and at the very least, I had to know that I’d tried.

But where would I get another diaphragm, a better diaphragm? I could use my own, of course, but that felt like more than I was willing to sacrifice for my country. And then there was the whole gender thing to consider: mine might be too much for him to handle, it might wear his entire system down.

I wanted to pause and ponder: if an organ holds gendered characteristics, does that mean biology plays a bigger part than I, an avid feminist, would like to give it credit for? Or is it that everything our culture teaches us simply sticks and accumulates in certain parts of our bodies? But I had to keep working.

I looked at the diaphragm again and noticed there was a hole in its center that was causing a bleeding, which, in turn, was probably causing the trembling. None of the other organs were bleeding, so it seemed significant. C’mon, c’mon, work with me here, I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. The dentures made their clicking sound and it made me look at them. I could take a tooth out and use it to fill the hole, but somehow that didn’t feel right. For one thing, the teeth looked expensive – I always thought Our First President had wooden teeth, but now that I looked at them I could see that they were made of something like gold or ivory. And besides, I had the distinct feeling that George was sensitive about his teeth and would not appreciate one of them gone.

All of a sudden, the diaphragm jumped out of my hand, or maybe I just dropped it. When I kneeled down to pick it up, I saw a cigar butt on the floor right next to it. It must have been Calvin’s, though I hadn’t actually seen him smoke it. I knew now what I had to do, though it made very little sense. I picked up the butt and stuck it in the middle of the diaphragm, to stop the bleeding. It worked, and soon the shaking stopped as well. But cigar ashes were making the diaphragm all filthy now, and I couldn’t possibly put it back like that. I ran to the bathroom and grabbed some Lysol and a wash cloth, and I scrubbed the diaphragm until you couldn’t look at it and not think: Clean. When it seemed like I might be peeling off some tissue, I stopped, and put the diaphragm back, feeling hopeful.

Even though my detailed description suggests time had passed, in reality this took place in a matter of forty-two seconds. Then I picked up the work exactly where I’d left it off, once again working accurately and proficiently, reassembling Our First President back organ by organ.

Part Five

When I was done, I had a flash: for a split second I saw it again, the room as it looked with all the organs scattered around. I feared that all my hard work just went to waste, but then realized it was just a flash and that George Washington was right there, all in one piece, oblivious to all that’d happened. I was curious to see what would be different about him, now that he had this whole other diaphragm. I was hoping the new version would be a little more like sweet John Tyler. That was mind blowing, babe, George said. I understood then that there was no point in telling him. I didn’t want him to have to carry that around with him for all eternity – the fact that some chick saved his life.  Glad you feel this way, I said.

The situation required enormous amounts of concentration. As far as he was concerned, we were at the post-coital state of relaxed muscles, easy breaths. I thought it best to say what I would have probably said if he’d never exploded, if I’d never put him back together, if it had really been just an ordinary sex act. Need some tissue? I asked, but immediately realized my mistake:. There was obviously nothing that needed wiping by that point, and drawing his attention to that fact might raise his suspicion. But, apparently, there was no reason to worry. I’m good, babe, he said and stretched, real good. Then he winked. And there was something about the way he said it, and the way he winked, that made it clear: he was the same George, different diaphragm or not. I had deluded myself if I thought I could really make a difference. In my chest, frustration felt heavy like it was going to stay, as the pointlessness of it all became unmistakable. Then I could feel my anger again, as if I’d just walked in the room, carrying the heavy tray that he would not help me with, realizing there was no president left but him.

In my anger, I wished I’d never reassembled him. I wanted to tell him everything, to scream the truth in his face, to humiliate him. But I knew it wouldn’t matter. He would make up his own truth, and then choose to believe it, as men often do. He would call me a liar, a megalomaniac bitch, or worse. So, he’d say, feeling better about yourself now that you’ve deconstructed and reconstructed the First President of your nation? Planning to go to the press, get your fifteen minutes? And then he’d laugh, to show how ridiculous he found my story, and probably hiss a threat about what he would tell the press in return. No, there was no need in all of that. I obviously had to be the bigger man here, so to speak.

As I walked out of my bedroom, making it clear that I expected him gone when I returned, I suddenly had the distinct feeling that I’d won. Even though I wasn’t sure what the contest was, and couldn’t even be sure that there ever was one, I licked my lips twice and smiled; when I get back, there will be no men in my apartment, and I will once again reign over my space.  If that isn’t victory, then what is?