Cackle, page 17
“Left?”
“One morning Oskar woke up and she was gone. He came storming over here, of course, accusing me. I hadn’t a clue where she went. He didn’t believe me. He asked to come inside. I didn’t much like the idea of letting an angry man into my home, for him to turn the place over, searching for someone I knew wasn’t here. He threatened to call the police. Imagine! I said if he did that, I’d harvest his teeth, pluck them from his jaw one by one and use them for jewelry.”
She sighs, stroking her bare collarbone. “A shame he relented. He does have nice teeth, don’t you think? They would have made a beautiful necklace.”
If I had any sensation left in my body, I’m sure I would feel my chin dropping into my lap.
“Anyway,” Sophie says, noting my expression, “I had nothing to do with her leaving. All I did was listen and give her advice. He was the one who drove her off. He was very dismissive of her needs. But no, as far as he’s concerned, and perhaps the entire town, it’s my fault.”
“Where did she go?”
“She talked about California,” Sophie says, and sips her latte. “Maybe there.”
“Maybe?”
She stares at me. Seconds pass. In these seconds, babies are born, people die, stars burn millions of miles away and I may or may not let out a silent, nervous fart.
“Helen isn’t dead,” Sophie says finally, “or missing, if that’s what you’re wondering. She resurfaced several years ago and has been in touch with Erik. I’ve not been informed of her whereabouts. From what you’ve just told me, it seems her reappearance has not absolved me. A stubborn grudge from a stubborn man.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No, that’s all right. I suppose it’s best that you know,” she says, “and that I was the one to tell you. Now, do you have any more questions? Any other concerns?”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Already in the past,” she says. She sits up straight and smiles, her eyes bright again. “Now! Darling. Will you come? I have a surprise for you in the ballroom.”
Any lingering nerves are immediately mollified when she reveals her surprise. She’s set up a shuffleboard court.
“Have you ever played?” she asks.
“I haven’t,” I say.
“I’ll teach you.”
And she does. She teaches me. We spend the day playing shuffleboard in the ballroom, taking breaks to drink raspberry lemonade and eat shortbread cookies.
I feel guilty for entertaining any suspicions about Sophie. I mean, she went out of her way to make a shuffleboard court for us to have a fun afternoon together. She baked cookies and made lemonade. She dropped everything to come over when I was upset; she cleaned my apartment and made sure that I was okay. She’s the most generous person I’ve ever met.
I look at her now, dancing around to Blackout-era Britney Spears, and all I feel is an overwhelming love for her.
How could anyone not love her? How could anyone fear her?
“All these songs are about sex,” Sophie says. “Why is society so obsessed with sex?”
I shrug.
“If this singer is truly seeking a partner, someone should tell her good conversation is much harder to have than good sex. That should be her primary concern.”
“Yeah, somehow I really don’t think it is.”
“I can’t help everyone,” she says. “Are you hungry? Do you want to make pizza?”
Half an hour later, I’m covered in flour and Sophie, in her black dress, is somehow not. Yet we’ve both participated in making the dough. Kneading side by side. Now it sits in a bowl covered by a damp cloth near the oven, and we’re chopping vegetables.
“Onions make me cry,” I tell Sophie.
“Not me,” she says. “But I don’t think I can have a proper cry anymore. I don’t think it’s physically possible.”
“You don’t cry?”
“I have,” she says. “I get sad. But emotions become . . . less and less over time. I feel things. And at times, I feel them intensely. But there’s a perspective that comes with age. It’s all fleeting. I savor the joy. The sadness, I let it pass. Crying takes a lot of effort. Not a lot of things inspire me to exert myself.”
“You want to chop the onion? I’ll trade for the broccoli.”
“Yes, darling,” she says. “Do you want artichokes? I think I have some down in the cellar.”
“Sure,” I say.
“I’ll get them.” She wipes her hands on a rag and pauses for a moment. “You shouldn’t go into the cellar.”
“Right, right,” I say, thinking it’s one of her cryptic jokes.
“No, pet,” she says, “I’m serious.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”
“The ghosts are there now. Don’t worry. They can’t leave. And there weren’t that many. It’s not as if the place was crawling with them.”
“Okay.” How many ghosts does she consider not that many? I’m of the strong opinion that any number of ghosts is too many.
“They’re trapped down there, so, you know . . . best for you not to go.”
“Not a problem.”
“Great,” she says. She opens the door to the pantry, then leans down to open the cellar. There’s an outburst of moans. Eerie, ghastly bellows.
“Oh, shush,” I hear Sophie say. Then she lowers her voice and begins to speak a language I don’t understand. Maybe Latin? Whatever it is, it shuts them up. There’s no more moaning.
She emerges moments later, holding a jar of artichoke hearts.
“My second favorite type of heart to have on pizza,” she says.
This is a joke. I can tell because of the look she gives me after she says it.
“What am I going to do with you?” I ask.
“What kind of cheese do we want? Goat?”
We cook the pizza on a stone over crackling red flames in the fireplace. We eat it at the dining table. Sophie lights some candles, but the room is so huge that a few small candles don’t make much of a difference. It’s dark, and where it isn’t dark, shadows dart in and out of the space afforded to them by the candlelight.
“Is it cold in here?” she asks me.
“It’s a little cold.”
She stands up. As she walks over to the fireplaces, I hear her snap her fingers. There’s a loud pop, and suddenly a fire roars in the first fireplace. In the new light, I watch Sophie throw a yellowish powder into the second fireplace, and a fire appears there instantaneously. She snaps her fingers again as she comes toward me. She sits down next to me and takes another slice of pizza.
“Fancy,” I tell her, staring at the two big healthy fires.
Shapes emerge in the flames. On the left, a lion. On the right, a regal bird. They change. A wolf, a mouse.
“Ooh!”
The shapes swirl and disappear.
“Do you think you’ll stay over tonight, pet?” she asks, pouring me some wine.
“Sure,” I say.
“Really?”
I hesitate. On one hand, I know for a fact that this house is haunted and that one of the ghosts attempted to kill me. On the other, I don’t want to go home. I’m having a great time. It’d be a bummer to trek back through the woods to spend the night alone in my apartment, thinking about Sam and potentially being too sad to masturbate.
If Sophie says she trapped the ghosts in the basement, she trapped the ghosts in the basement. I heard them down there.
“We can stay up late,” she says. “We could play more shuffleboard, or watch a film, or read. I can make hot chocolate. I’ve got some cream I can whip.”
“All that sounds great,” I say. But we’re too full after dinner for hot chocolate. Instead, we split another bottle of wine and Sophie puts on Jaws, which surprises me.
“I heard everyone talking about it when it first came out, so I had to watch. Have you ever seen it?”
“Yeah, a few times. It’s one of my dad’s favorite movies.”
“I quite enjoy it,” she says. “But of course, I always root for the shark.”
I think she’s kidding, but at the end of the movie, when Brody blows up the shark, she sighs, shaking her head like she hoped for a different outcome despite knowing there wouldn’t be one.
We walk upstairs arm in arm, and she kisses me good night. A quick kiss on each cheek. One of the few things I remember about my mother is that she used to kiss my cheeks like that. Kiss, kiss. Then she’d say, Good night, mini muffin. I don’t know why she called me that, but she always did.
“What is it?” Sophie asks. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” I say. “Just had a random memory come up.”
“Mm,” Sophie says. “A good one, I hope.”
She winks and heads toward her room.
“Good night,” she says.
“Night.”
In my room, there are two new lamps and a giant box of chocolates on the nightstand. The extra light contributes to increased coziness. The fear I previously experienced in this space is gone.
I change into the pink silk pajamas that Sophie laid out for me. I eat the chocolates in bed while reading a book of collected poems. When I fall asleep, it’s deep and dreamless.
* * *
—
The next morning, over pancakes at the diner, I decide to come clean with Sophie about my most recent stupid decision. My upcoming blind date.
I’ve been nervous about her response, but she doesn’t have much of a reaction.
“Any step away from the past is a step in the right direction,” she says.
“I guess,” I say. “I’m just worried it’s going to be a shitty experience, and then I’ll feel worse about everything.”
“Why? Are you not happy as you are? With how things are?”
“I mean, kind of. Not really.”
She sighs. “You don’t need a boyfriend, darling. You need perspective.”
“Probably.”
“Does the coffee taste funny to you today? It tastes funny to me.” And with that, the subject is changed.
I don’t think about the date again until the next day, when Jill comes prancing into my classroom wearing a bat costume. Apparently, the staff was meant to dress up for Halloween—information I might have learned if I cared enough to pay attention to memos, which I don’t.
“What are you?” she asks me.
“Forgetful.”
She laughs. “You’re so funny. I told Pascal how funny you are.”
“No pressure.”
“You want a Mounds?” She offers me a fun-sized candy bar. I take it. It’s very warm. Molten inside its wrapper. “I have good news. You have plans Friday.”
“Cool.”
“With me! And my husband, Dan. And who knows? Maybe your future husband. Pascal!”
“Again, no pressure.”
“Seven work for you? Have you been to Rhineland?”
“No.”
“You’re going to love it. They have this cheese dip appetizer that might be my favorite thing ever. So seven?”
“Yep. See you there,” I say, instead of what I want to say, which is Kill me now.
“Great!” She hands me another Mounds before flapping out of my classroom.
As soon as she leaves, Madison enters. She’s always early.
“No costume?” she asks. She’s wearing Ouija board knee socks and a blouse patterned with skulls.
“No,” I say. I toss her the Mounds.
“Here,” I say flatly. “Happy Halloween.”
The rest of the week I spend every spare minute brainstorming viable excuses I could use to get out of dinner. A variety of illnesses. A head cold. A chest cold. The flu. Allergies. Strep throat. A stomach virus. Food poisoning. Pink eye. Ringworm. Or maybe the death of a relative? I have a lot of dead relatives. It wouldn’t be a lie to say that my grandpa died. It was six years ago, but he did die.
I wasn’t raised religious, but a common warning from my grandmother (still alive) is that you get out what you put into the universe. The ole “What goes around comes around.” Karma.
Since things already aren’t going so hot for me, I can’t risk any cosmic consequences.
By Thursday afternoon, I’ve resigned myself to going.
When I get home, I open my closet, readying myself for a long, frustrating solo fashion show in which I get to confront how terrible I look in everything I own, but instead I find a new dress hanging front and center. It’s a deep yellowy gold. Crushed velvet. V-neck, A-line.
I try it on. It’s a perfect fit. There’s never been a more flattering dress.
There’s a note tucked into the sleeve.
To what’s ahead. Have fun on your date. XO, Sophie
I’m so moved by the gesture I could cry.
The dress reframes the way I look at the date. It could be fun. That’s a possibility. Pascal could be really hot. He could be nice and smart and charming. We could hit it off. He could want the same things that I want. Maybe we’ll get married at the courthouse and have an intimate brunch after. Maybe we’ll honeymoon in Barcelona, hold hands and kiss in the streets, have strangers come up to us to tell us how in love we look. Maybe we’ll buy an old house with character, with good bones, and we’ll fix it up ourselves, then post pictures so people can marvel at the before and after.
Maybe we’ll have a tradition of sleeping in late on Sundays, and we’ll wake up in each other’s arms just shy of noon, spooning so we don’t have to endure morning breath.
What if I get to have one of those great stories? Like how some couples talk about how they met, like how he found her glove and then chased after her and then they kissed in the snow and the rest was history? I could say I was with someone for almost ten years who I thought was my soul mate, but then we broke up and I moved here and got set up on a blind date and found my actual soul mate.
I look at myself in the mirror, in this dress, and it’s hard not to feel a spark of hope. It’s impossible not to consider the chance.
BONE TO PICK
On Friday, I rush home after school to shower, blow-dry my hair, put on makeup, put on the dress, accessorize. I wear my black boots, black stockings and a black faux-leather jacket. I wear my mother’s earrings, black diamond studs. I even wear red lipstick.
But then I change my mind and wipe it off.
On the drive over, I’m too nervous to listen to music. I listen to my phone calmly providing directions and to my own heart anxiously throbbing.
I open my mouth to speak words of affirmation like You can do this! or something along those lines, but what comes out is “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
My hands are so sweaty I can barely grip the steering wheel.
“Get it together,” I snarl at my reflection in the rearview mirror. I take a few deep breaths as I pull into the parking lot. I find a space far away from the restaurant, hoping it’ll give me time to walk off my nerves. I don’t let myself linger in the car. I force myself out into the frigid November night.
Having to slog across the parking lot doesn’t do much for my nerves. My sweat freezes my hair to my temples. I almost twist my ankle in a pothole. By the time I open the door to the restaurant, I’m even more agitated than I was before.
It’s a kitschy place. A lot of wood. Ceiling beams wrapped in colorful lights. There are ambiguous flags on the walls, many of them featuring lions or crests, many of them both. The tables are close together and people are drinking out of beer steins. It might be German themed.
I might be on a blind double date at a German-themed restaurant.
Am I going to have to eat sausage in front of strangers?
“Annie!” Jill is waving at me from the bar, her ponytail going wild.
There are two men next to her. One I recognize from the photos on her desk. He’s pretty standard-looking. Guessing that he watches football on Sundays in his lucky sweatpants and that he enjoys trips to Home Depot. He probably has strong opinions about women in politics. I don’t know what they are. But I bet he has them.
The other guy, the guy behind Jill’s husband, is . . . not bad-looking. He’s got a stubbly half beard and dark hair that he’s obviously put some effort into styling. His nose is substantial, and I like it. I want to touch it. Run my fingers over it. He’s got full lips and big eyes. Almost a unibrow but it works.
I walk over, nearly smashing into a waitress passing by with a tray of food. I choose to play it off like it didn’t happen, as the waitress huffs away in her truly unfortunate lederhosen-inspired uniform.
“Hey,” I say to Jill.
“Hi!” she says. “Can I hug you?”
“Sure.”
She throws her arms around my neck. I guess I never realized how short she is. I feel like a giant. I should have worn flats.
“This is my husband, Dan,” she says.
Dan stands up and shakes my hand. I knew he would. He looks like a handshaker. I bet he’ll give his children handshakes instead of hugs.
Maybe I’m projecting because my dad never hugged me. I’m familiar with parental affection in the form of an awkward pat on the back, a firm handshake. The occasional coveted high five.
“And this is Pascal,” Jill says, her voice lilting.
Pascal doesn’t stand up. He waves. “Hi,” he says.
I can’t tell if he’s shy or disappointed.
“Hi. I’m Annie.”
“I know,” he says, and sips his drink. So, not shy.
“Let me check if they’ll seat us,” Jill says, and skips over to the host.
“So,” Dan says, “heard you used to live in the Big Apple.”
