The Guest, page 14
“It’s hanging in the laundry room,” Karen said. “I can iron it tonight.”
Margaret rolled her eyes.
“It wasn’t even dirty,” Margaret said, under her breath.
Karen kept smiling, as if she hadn’t heard.
“We’re headed out,” Karen said. “Wish your sister good luck.”
“Bye.” Margaret was scanning her phone.
“Good luck,” Alex said to the girl. The girl didn’t react. And why should she? Alex was a stranger.
* * *
—
“So,” Margaret said, after they heard the sound of the car on the gravel outside. “What do you want to do now?”
A beat, a space opening up for Alex to consider her outstanding debts. Keep it going, keep the day blurry. She shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Do you wanna drink a little wine?”
* * *
—
Margaret opened the fridge. It was stocked with half-size cans of Coke, Jiffy peanut butter and bottles of white wine. Alex wandered into the pantry. There were unopened plastic containers of candy, some gift basket remnant. One of them: a see-through cube of sugar roses. Like lemon drops, only pink, petaled, pale with sugar. She dumped one into her palm, then took the candy in her mouth, sucked, moved it from cheek to cheek. Why were they so appealing? They were so dainty and girlish, but kind of grotesque, too, like little malignant growths.
Alex rattled the box. “Can I take these upstairs?”
“Yeah,” Margaret said, two stemless glasses in her hand, an already-open bottle of white wine sloshing in the crook of her arm.
As they made their way to the staircase, they passed a small room with a twin bed, a single dresser.
“What’s in there?”
“Karen’s room,” Margaret said.
The only visible possessions were a hairbrush and a toiletry bag lined up neatly on the dresser.
“Come on,” Margaret said, “it’s boring in there.”
* * *
—
The wine had a sailing ship on the label. Margaret poured each glass almost full. It was so cold that it tasted like nothing.
“So,” Alex said. “What’s the deal with Karen?”
“Karen? I dunno. She’s, like, our babysitter,” Margaret said. “For, like, forever.”
“And she lives with you guys?” Alex said.
“Yeah. My mom, like, helped her get a green card and stuff.”
Margaret already sounded defensive. Best to drop it. Alex drank more wine.
“Sorry,” Margaret said, “you think I’m, like, a total brat. ’Cause of the shirt. I know, it sounded really bratty, but I, like, told her, unless it’s in the hamper, please don’t wash it. And sometimes she, like, shrinks things, like my favorite things.”
Alex shrugged.
“We love Karen,” Margaret said, diplomatically. And, after she seemed drunker, she repeated herself. “We really do love Karen.”
“Of course,” Alex said. Of course we love Karen, she said in her head, but did not say out loud.
* * *
—
It took turning on Alex’s phone three more times before it stayed on long enough to write the boy’s number down on a piece of paper. Jack’s number. Nothing from Simon, of course, and nothing from Dom either, which was more surprising.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Alex said. “Just to text this guy,” she said, “mine keeps dying.”
The background of Margaret’s phone was a tropical scene, palm trees bent against the sherbet sunset.
Alex composed a text.
Hey it’s Alex from the beach. Phone dead srry, using my friends.
What you up to today?
“Is he cute?” Margaret said from the bed. She’d put on a lilac sweater. “The boy?”
Sometimes Margaret sounded like she was reading from a script, her lines ringing hollow.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Pretty cute.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I met him on the beach,” Alex said. “I don’t know. He’s blond.”
“Blond!” Margaret almost clapped her hands. “Cute! I love it.”
Margaret’s phone dinged. A text from Jack.
Not much u wanna hang tonight?
Margaret was watching her, her head tilted. Margaret’s expression, now fuzzed out with wine, made Alex suddenly uneasy. Margaret reminded her of the girls from that first restaurant job—something skittish and unsettled in her face, an obvious discomfort that painfully called up adolescence.
Alex typed a response.
Yeah or maybe earlier?
It would be better if Alex had something to do with her hands. Anything so she and Margaret weren’t just sitting here.
“Let me do your eye makeup,” Alex said.
“Now?” Margaret blushed.
“Yeah, why not?”
All the makeup on Margaret’s vanity was expensive. It looked untouched.
“Here, sit here.” Alex moved the chair near the window, into the light.
Both of their breaths smelled of wine, though Alex was sucking on one of the rose-flavored candies. Margaret tried one, too, audibly rolling the candy against her teeth.
“Yuck.” Margaret spit it into her hand. She opened her fingers over the trash can, letting the candy drop in, then wiped her palm on her dress. “It tastes like perfume.”
“Let’s do neutrals, okay?” Alex said. “Like, grays, and this is a nice color, right, this sort of pewter one? Close your eyes.”
Under the thin skin of Margaret’s closed lids, Alex saw the tiny snakes of blue veins, the faint animal twitch of the girl’s eyeballs.
First Alex put foundation on Margaret’s eyelids. Then a pat of a shimmery pale color. The trick was to put it under the bottom lash, too, so it emphasized the whole eye. How many videos had Alex watched online, learning how to do this, how many hours had she spent studying the other girls: those girls who had lived with her in that bad apartment, girls who made pancakes late at night and cried for faraway mothers, girls who paused doing their makeup to take a delicate inhale off a joint waiting in the ashtray. They sat by the windows to get better phone service. They wore hoodies over tight dresses and didn’t own suitcases. Alex was aware that some of the girls hanging around were very young. But she was also young. It was a matter of a few years sometimes. No way to be exactly sure. Alex didn’t ask questions; she made enough coffee for them, she kept her door closed. When she heard one of them weeping on the phone, Alex did the girl a kindness, or so she saw it at the time—she left her alone.
Alex used a different brush to push an asphalt color along Margaret’s lash line.
Margaret looked especially vulnerable like this. Her eyes closed, her face tipped upward. As if she would let Alex do whatever she wanted to her.
A framed photo stared out at Alex from the desk: Margaret and the twins and their mother perched on a piece of driftwood. They were all barefoot, a whiff of corporate cheer in their smiles.
“What about you?” Alex said. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No,” Margaret said. “I’ve had them before, but, like, not this very second.”
Alex found the biggest brush and fluffed it against her palm.
“Can you make, like, a kissy face?”
Margaret was eager to follow any instruction: she pursed her lips, her cheeks hollowing. Even though Alex had finished her eye makeup, Margaret kept her eyes closed.
Margaret was not, Alex could see, a happy girl.
“Perfect,” Alex said, and worked the bronzer along the cheekbones, into Margaret’s hairline.
“Can I see,” Margaret said, her eyes flitting open.
“I just started,” Alex said.
“Just let me look, for a second,” Margaret said. “I wanna see.”
Ignoring the mirror on the vanity, Margaret looked at herself through her phone camera. Her face wobbled on the screen.
“Cool,” Margaret said, turning from side to side. “It’s good. Wait, watch.”
Margaret pressed a button and all at once her skin looked better, as if lit from within, an unnatural glow emanating from the whites of her eyes, now suddenly so white.
“Get in with me,” Margaret said, “take a picture.”
Alex hesitated.
“Come on,” Margaret said.
“I hate photos,” Alex said.
“Seriously, you have to. Just one.”
Alex didn’t want to feel sorry for Margaret or make an accounting of the need in her face. Alex bent down and pressed her cheek to Margaret’s. On the screen, they both looked eerie, strange, their faces smeared into softness and their eyes extra bright. Alex considered the unfamiliar version of herself. It was weirdly compelling, this new avatar. She looked reset, as if the last stretch of her life had not happened, as if you could erase things and start over just like that. Had she ever actually looked that clean and fresh and blameless?
But when the filter clicked off, it was worse. There was her actual face. In too much detail. A faint divot forming between her brows that she had not noticed before. A wrinkle? Alex backed out of range of the phone camera.
Margaret studied the photo, zooming in unhappily.
“You look good.” Margaret stuck out her tongue. “I look like shit.”
“That’s not true. You look great. I like that sweater.”
Margaret looked down. “You can have it if you want.”
Alex smiled.
“I’m serious.” Margaret shrugged her arms out of the sweater. “Take it,” she said, “I don’t even like it.”
“I’m not taking your sweater.”
“Seriously, I don’t want it. Take it.” Margaret tossed the sweater at Alex—it was warm.
“Well,” Alex said, resting the sweater on top of her bag. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Want me to text the picture to you?” Margaret said.
“I’m okay.”
Margaret looked hurt.
“I mean you can. But my phone,” Alex offered, “is basically dead.” This explanation seemed sufficient. As Alex tested different lipsticks on the back of her hand, she watched Margaret post the photo.
Margaret refreshed the page, waiting for a like that did not come. She refreshed again.
Too sad, suddenly, Margaret and her phone, the powder on Margaret’s cheeks settling into the light down that covered her face. Down was a side effect of starvation, as Alex knew from living with those professionally anorexic Eastern Europeans, their diet of popcorn and miniature bell peppers.
Margaret was zooming in on the photo again.
“You’re, like, really pretty,” Margaret said, her eyes slippery, aiming a crooked smile in Alex’s direction. Was she flirting, in her clumsy way? If so, she wasn’t aware of it on any conscious level. Probably the possibility was too foreign for her to recognize. What would she do if Alex sat next to her on the bed?
Alex had the thought, and then she was doing it, settling on the bed, scooting toward Margaret. Alex studied her from this new proximity. Margaret kept smiling. Uncomfortable to imagine how far she would let Alex go.
What was she doing? Alex stopped herself. She stood up.
“Do you have an eyelash curler?”
* * *
—
Another glass of wine and Margaret was napping, her expression peaceful, her dress hiked up her legs, her eyes dark with makeup and her lipstick already diffusing beyond her mouth. Her makeup might get on her pillowcase. Should Alex try to prevent this? But there were probably twenty pillowcases in the linen closet, what did it matter?
Alex sat in the desk chair. She flipped through a yearbook from the shelf: out fell a grid of school photos, Margaret as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, in uniform, her hair pushed back by a velvet headband, gaze fixed on some point to the side of the lens. The photo depressed Alex, all the questions visible in the girl’s face, the last moment before she found out how cruel the world might be. But really, why should Alex pity her? Margaret, in her home, with her family, her clothes cleaned by someone else. She would trundle forth into her future.
The bottom drawer of the desk had an unopened candle in a box, a velvet pouch stuffed behind. Inside the pouch was a jumble of earrings. All studs. Most of them were diamonds, though they were small. Like the earrings Margaret wore, twin pinpricks of light. Fake? No way to tell right now. She considered taking a pair, but decided against it.
Margaret let out an abbreviated sigh and nestled into her pillow, asleep.
At the last minute, Alex palmed a lone ruby stud that did not have a mate. In a way, she was being helpful, getting rid of it. What was more annoying than one of something, a reminder that the world was unreliable, that even valuable things went missing?
It was cold enough, in the air-conditioning, that Alex pulled the blanket over Margaret, covering her skinny legs, her immaculately painted toenails. Out the window, there was a play structure in the yard, a wooden turret and slide, and, farther away, the pool, half hidden by a tree.
“Hey,” she whispered to Margaret.
Nothing.
“You awake?”
Margaret wheezed lightly, then turned on her side.
Alex’s swimsuit was in her bag, still damp from the club, and no one was home, anyway, so who cared about a swimsuit?
* * *
—
The pool water was cool but not cold. If the sun were out, swimming would be nicer. But it was still overcast, the air heavy and gray. Alex sat on the step, hunched over her bare breasts. She held her left breast in her hand, studying the nipple, then ran her finger along the line of her thigh. Her pubic hair was growing back in. The ingrown hair hadn’t really healed: a dime-sized aura of pink. Don’t touch it, she thought, even as she dug in with a fingernail. She stopped only after the bleeding started.
Alex floated for a while. She was sucking on a candy rose, moving it from one cheek to another. She didn’t feel like doing laps. Nice to just lie on her back, to feel half of her exposed to the air, the other half in the water. The water was cold enough that it made her aware of every part of her body.
Three days until Simon’s party.
She floated in silence. Nothing but trees all around her.
A strange afternoon, here with this poor unhappy girl, now alone in this pool that, Alex felt sure, no one ever used. These were the type of people who assumed that there were rules, who believed that if they followed them they would one day be rewarded. And here was Alex, naked in their pool.
The pool was surrounded by trees: any slight breeze and they rained almost translucent white petals into the water. The petals were veiny and bisected. Like insect wings. Alex dove down to the bottom of the deep end, exhaling as she sank. It was colder down there, actually cold. Pressure on her temples. When she opened her eyes, it was just dim, the echoing sound of nothing, of a void. It was nice to be alone. When she looked up, there were pinpricks dimpling the water: was it raining?
Alex surfaced to drizzle on her face. Finally the clouds had broken. It wasn’t bad, at first, light drops hitting the water all around her, almost as fine as mist, but then, in a big, visible curtain, she watched real rain move in: fat drops that splashed the water and were cold on her shoulders. She pulled herself up onto the side of the pool. Alex groped for her towel, still sucking on the candy rose, when she caught movement by the house: she was so surprised she bit the candy cleanly in two.
There was Karen in her blindingly white Keds, the little girl holding her hand, and they were both looking at Alex, who was naked, shivering. Karen did not seem shocked, or mad. She just seemed embarrassed.
How did the look Karen gave Alex seem to contain everything? Knowledge of exactly what kind of person Alex was.
Karen turned away and pulled the girl into the house. Before she disappeared behind the door, the girl glanced back, gaping openly as Alex covered herself with the damp towel.
* * *
—
Margaret was sitting up in bed, her makeup smeared. Her eyes were bruised with shadow. Her crotch was visible under her dress, a wedge of white cotton underwear.
“I fell asleep?” Margaret pulled absently at her dress. Her nose wrinkled. “Why are you all wet?”
“I went swimming.”
“In the pool?” Margaret looked out the window. “But it’s raining.”
Alex put on underwear with her towel still wrapped around her. A black shirt and a pair of cutoffs that Simon had hated.
“Sorry,” Alex said, buttoning her shorts briskly. “Can I just check if my friend wrote back?”
Margaret had slept with her phone beside her: the mention of it perked her up. She sat up and typed in the passcode.
“Did my friend write back?” Alex was jiggling her leg: she made herself stop.
When Margaret handed her phone over, the phone background, Alex saw, had already been changed to the photo of Margaret and Alex. She regretted letting herself be photographed: why did the thought of existing on this girl’s phone conjure up so much dread?
A text from Jack.
What time is good later?
Alex could tell Margaret was watching her. She typed quickly.
Can u come get me?
Like asap. Sorry don’t have car right now.
Alex waited. Three dots appeared.
Right now?
I kinda said id have dinner w my dad tho. So maybe later like 9ish
or ten idk
The hours that would have to pass before it was nine seemed interminable.
