Cackle, page 15
“Annie,” he says. His voice is calm, and somehow that’s worse. “There are going to be pictures.”
“We broke up five minutes ago.”
“We broke up five months ago! Six, actually.”
“After almost ten years!”
“No,” he says. “It was eight years, and the last two barely counted. We were together, but we weren’t really. You know what I’m saying. It wasn’t how it used to be between us. It wasn’t the same.”
I smell the smoke. I can taste it.
“This was your decision,” I say. “And you made me leave.”
“It was our decision,” he says. “Don’t pin this on me. It wasn’t working and you know that.”
“I thought we were going to get married! You blindsided me. You just gave up!” I’m yelling now. Crying and yelling.
“Annie. Come on. That’s not true.”
“It is true. You gave up, and I was the one who had to suffer for it. Pick up my whole life and start over. And you’re just there. Doing the same thing. In our apartment. At bars with random girls.”
“Shannon isn’t some random girl,” he says. “She’s my girlfriend. We’re together.”
I look down, expecting to see my skin blistering. Fat translucent bubbles. Visual proof of the sensation I feel, of the pain. I touch my face, and there are no lesions, no gaping wounds, no sticky recessions of skin. I’m on fire. I’m on fire, but I have nothing to show for it.
“Annie?”
“Okay,” I say.
“It happened,” he says. “Sometimes things happen sooner than you expect.”
“Sure.”
“Sure?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“Fair,” he says. “I don’t want this to change anything. She knows that we’re close and that you’re a part of my life. As friends. She’s good with it.”
“Good,” I say. “I’m glad she approves.”
“Annie, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“All right,” he says. “I reached out as a courtesy.”
“A courtesy? A courtesy! Wow,” I say. “Should I send a picture of you in to the National Enquirer? ‘Good guys! They do exist!’ ”
“Why are you being so sarcastic?” he asks.
“I’m sarcastic. Did you forget this fun fact about me?”
“You’re never sarcastic to me,” he says. “We were always nice to each other. Always.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s hard to be nice right now. I’m sorry.”
There’s a faint sensation on my hand. It’s a spider. A big one. Big enough that I can see its individual eyes. So many of them, all looking up at me.
All of a sudden, it rears back. It lifts one of its front legs and waves it back and forth. It’s also shaking its head.
It does not approve of my apology.
“That’s okay,” Sam says. “It’s a weird situation. It’s hard. I just thought you should hear it from me. Now you know.”
“Now I know.”
The spider plops back down on all of its legs. It’s still shaking its head.
I wonder if it’s Sophie. I wonder if she can see what the spiders see. She’ll be so mad if she finds out that I called Sam. So disappointed. I can’t tell her. I can’t face her.
I move my hand over to the coffee table and gently wiggle the spider off. It crosses its front legs and turns its back to me to signal its discontent.
“Nothing’s changed,” Sam says. “We’re still friends.”
“Nothing’s changed,” I echo. How dense can he be?
Or is it me? Am I the one who’s being unreasonable? We have been broken up for about six months. How did I not anticipate this? It actually never crossed my mind that he would move on. That he would really go on to date someone else. To fuck someone else. To get a new girlfriend.
I guess I was operating on the phantom hope that we might get back together.
I stare at the picture. I can’t really see Shannon’s face; she’s in profile. She looks cute. Pretty. Beautiful even. Maybe.
I wish that I could prick my finger and fall into a long deep sleep, and that when I woke up, there’d be a hot guy there at my bedside totally enamored with me.
The spider begins to pace on the table. I don’t know what it wants from me.
“All right, Annie, I’ll let you go,” Sam says. “We’ll talk soon. I want to hear more about life in Rowan.”
“Sure.”
“All right. I am sorry, Annie. I am.”
“Okay. Bye, Sam.”
“Bye.”
I hear him hang up. I can’t move. I can’t put the phone down. I can’t do anything but cry.
There’s a knock on my door.
I can’t open it, but I don’t need to.
I watch as the dead bolt unlocks itself. As the knob turns. As the door swings open.
Sophie’s there. In her magnificent black feathered coat, and a new matching black feathered hat.
“Oh, pet,” she says.
I don’t ask her how she knows. I can’t move my mouth. I remain motionless.
She pulls the phone from my hands and vanishes it somewhere. She sits next to me on the couch and pulls my head to her shoulder. She strokes my hair.
* * *
—
Sometime later, Sophie gets up and returns with a cup of tea.
“Drink this, and then go to sleep,” she says.
“Are you leaving?” I ask. The tremble in my voice makes me sound like a child.
She puts a hand on my cheek and nods.
“You’ll be all right,” she says, “though the tea tastes terrible.”
“What is it?”
“Mushroom. My own blend,” she says. “It will make you feel better. I promise you that. You trust me, yes?”
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be back in the morning,” she says. “If I stay tonight, tomorrow night will only be more difficult.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
“You’re right.”
She smiles without teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You were tired. You wanted to rest tonight. You must be so sick of me.”
“Don’t be silly. You were in distress. I’m here. I want to be here. That’s what friends are for,” she says. “Isn’t it?”
“I’m a burden on anyone close to me,” I say, thinking of Sam and every other person I’ve ever latched onto, squeezed and leaned on until they had enough. Old boyfriends, camp bunkmates, recess friends. I make someone the center of my universe until they buckle under the weight. It’s habitual. Now that Sam is gone, I’m doing it to Sophie.
“You’re not a burden to anyone but yourself,” she says. “Drink your tea. Get some sleep. Good night.”
As she leaves, I notice the spider from earlier is in her hair, its legs clutching the strands.
When the door closes, the silence rises up against me. It takes shape. I don’t know what time it is. It feels like I’m neck-deep in a nightmare. I wish it were a nightmare.
I want to look at the picture again.
I want to analyze the look on his face. I want to compare it to the pictures of us.
The stink of the mushroom tea distracts me.
I slip off of the couch onto the floor, stretch my legs out underneath the coffee table. My arms are slack. I can’t stiffen my wrists. I rock myself forward and sip from the mug.
Sophie was right. This tea is truly repulsive. It’s thick. It drags its nails across my tongue, squirms down my throat. But once it’s inside me, once it’s settled, it begins to warm me. Soothe me.
I take another sip. And another.
A brightness erupts inside my head. It splits into twin stars, one in each eyeball, twirling in my vision. Spinning, spinning.
Another sip and I’m up. I’m testing out my new body. It’s made of lightning.
I reach down and pick up the mug. There are little bits floating in it. Dark leaves. Tiny black seeds. Dried mushrooms. Flowers.
I finish drinking the tea. I swallow some of the flowers. The mushrooms. I don’t know if I’m supposed to.
I trust that I’ll be okay.
I dance around my apartment to music I can’t hear. But it’s there. I know it’s there. The spiders are dancing, too. They wave their limbs. I wave mine. I have just as many. Just as many as them.
Too many.
I raise my arms up. I try to count them. They multiply quickly, split at the ends into several hands. My collection of fingers, I notice, is not all fingers. Some of them are different. Ribs. Rib bones. I’ve got rib bones functioning as extra fingers.
Because I am a creature, an amalgam of bones. I’m a femur, a kneecap, a fragment of jaw. One of my arms isn’t an arm, or not just an arm. It’s extended by vertebrae.
I’m rearranging.
My torso is a sack of transparent skin. I can see my organs pulsating inside, wet lungs, a pulpy red heart, liver dark and smooth, stomach like a naked bird. I reach up for my head to see if it’s still there, and it is, only the texture is wrong. My distorted skull feels something like cardboard. Like an empty box. There are voids where my eyes should be.
But then how am I seeing?
My tongue. My tongue is like a huge sponge, wagging out of my mouth, spit bubbling, popping, murmuring.
I try to speak, but my tongue has expanded. It extends to the far reaches of my mouth. It presses up against my cheeks. It’s like a marshmallow in the microwave. It’s going to explode. My tongue is going to explode.
I stuff my fingers in my mouth to try to make space. So many fingers. So many rib bones.
That’s when I realize I don’t have any teeth.
I begin wailing, but the sound is trapped behind the wall of my tongue.
My teeth. Where are they? Where did they go?
I pull my hands out of my mouth. They’re covered in something. A slimy membrane. Glossy saliva. I try to shake it off, but that only forges my fingers together, so my hands are now like oven mitts.
Fleshy, webbed mitts.
There’s a dense noise ahead of me. A hearty plop.
I feel around in the bog of colors and find it.
My tongue.
Wearing a crown of my teeth.
“There you are,” I say, only I can’t make words without my tongue or my teeth. And even if I could, it wouldn’t matter, because the laughter is too loud.
Who’s laughing at me? Why?
Or am I laughing? Is it me?
It is.
I pull at the dog-eared pages of the universe and fold myself up inside of it.
BAD REACTION
I am violently ill. I’m hunched over the toilet in my bathroom, throwing up some kind of gluey water-bile mixture. It’s the kind of vomiting that involves the entire body. It’s brutal.
I’ve been puking for some time when I realize I’ve been puking for some time. When the fog disperses and the events of last night return to me, when my thoughts become clear.
I called Sam. He told me he has a girlfriend. Sophie came over. Comforted me. Gave me weird mushroom tea. I felt okay for a while, I think, but now I’m hard-core praying to the porcelain God.
When the last bits have trickled out and all that’s left is spit, I deposit a dollop of toothpaste on my tongue, lift a handful of faucet water to my mouth and swish. I don’t have any mouthwash.
When I come out of the bathroom, my eyes shrivel inside my head. It’s bright out. It’s daytime. Not morning. Day.
I scan my apartment. It’s a mess.
What the hell happened last night?
I stumble into my bedroom, where I find my phone on the floor. The screen is shattered. I attempt to turn it on. Nothing happens.
“Damn it!” I croak. If the sound of my voice is any indication, I’ve aged five thousand years overnight.
I fall back on my bed. What was in that tea?
I take a series of deep breaths and must pass out again, because when I open my eyes, it’s cloudy and raining outside, and my phone is gone.
I hear movement in the other room. Sophie humming to herself.
“Sophie,” I call. “Sophie?”
Footsteps.
She pokes her head through the doorway. “Yes, pet?”
“What’s happening? What time is it?”
“It’s three thirty,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
I prop myself up on my elbows. “Pretty bad. What was in that tea?”
She cocks her head to the side. “Was it too strong?”
Images sweat from my subconscious. They’re heinous. Abstract. A collage of Bosch paintings.
“I think I had some kind of trip,” I say, scratching my neck. “Or an allergic reaction. I . . . I might have hallucinated or maybe had nightmares. I don’t know.”
Sophie comes in and sits on the edge of the bed. Her hair is in a long braid draped over her shoulder. She’s wearing a velvet dress with a corset top and long sleeves. She looks great, as always.
I probably look like a hag.
“I may have been a little heavy-handed,” she says, nibbling on her thumbnail. “It’s been a long time since I last made that blend. I’m sorry.”
“I got sick,” I say.
“Oh, no!” she says. “It was supposed to make you feel better. Soothe you. Maybe boost your mood.”
“Well,” I say, rubbing my temples, “I think it was a successful distraction.”
The picture flashes before my eyes. Sam. And Shannon. Shannon. Worse than any echoing nightmare, than any Bosch painting.
“I see you’ve destroyed your torture device,” Sophie says, holding up my smashed phone. She sets it on the nightstand.
“Yeah. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I can’t really afford a new one.”
“You’ll be better off without it,” she says. She stands up. “Let me make you something to eat.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” I say, sinking back into bed.
“Why don’t we watch television?”
I think about it.
“Annie,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “We can watch TV.”
She helps me out of bed and over to the couch, where she settles me under a thick knit blanket.
“I made this for you,” she says.
It’s soft and warm, a pretty baby pink. It smells like lavender. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she says. “May I choose the program?”
I hand her the remote.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”
“No,” I say. I’m too afraid I’ll throw up again, though there is a sour taste lingering on my tongue I’d like to evict.
“More tea?” she asks. “Different tea? Have I ruined it for you?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Oh, dear,” she says. She doesn’t seem too bothered. She turns on the TV and selects a series about international luxury real estate properties.
I find it depressing.
But that’s probably because I’m depressed. All I can see is that image. Sam and her. Someone else. All I can feel is the twist of the knife, the slow death of possibility. This isn’t temporary.
I still love him, but he doesn’t love me.
It’s gone. Whatever he felt for me, he doesn’t feel it anymore. Not at all.
I lost it. I fucked up. I wasn’t enough.
“You were right,” I tell Sophie, who’s totally engrossed by this show, now featuring a gorgeous villa in the Italian countryside with its own spa.
“About what, pet?”
“I shouldn’t have called him,” I say. “I wish I didn’t know.”
“Someday you won’t care,” she says. She puts her arm around me. I rest my head on her shoulder and she rubs my back. “Shall I make you a revenge dress? Like Princess Diana?”
“You have to stop with the Windsors,” I say. “And I have nowhere to wear a revenge dress.”
“That’s the thing about a revenge dress, darling. You can wear it anywhere, everywhere, whenever your heart desires.”
I sigh.
“You don’t seem like a vengeful person,” she says. “I am.”
“No,” I say. It seems like the polite response.
“It’s true,” she says. “You should know that about me, Annie. I don’t mean it, like, you know . . . It sounds a bit cryptic. It’s not a threat. I’m just saying it’s my personality.”
“You’d wear a revenge dress?”
She laughs a little. “Among other things.”
“Yeah,” I say. “A bit cryptic.”
She laughs again, then turns up the volume on the TV.
We spend the afternoon like this—side by side on the couch. At some point she goes into the kitchen and comes back holding two caramel apples.
“Where did you get these?” I ask her as she hands me one. It’s on a long wooden stick.
She winks at me. That’s her answer.
I don’t have an appetite, but I eat it anyway. It’s delicious. Worth the risk of getting sick again.
It actually makes me feel better, somehow settling my stomach.
“How do you always know what I need?” I ask Sophie.
“I’ve told you,” she says. “I consider myself very intuitive.”
A memory crawls out of a cobwebby corner in my mind.
“On my birthday, I went out with this girl from my old job, and she insisted on taking me to see a psychic.”
Sophie nods slightly to signal that she’s listening. Juice from her apple streams down her chin. She wipes it with a small black cloth, then tucks the cloth into her cleavage.
I wonder what else she has hiding in there. How deep it goes.
“Yes,” Sophie says. “What happened?”
