Rose spoons up homemade chicken and rice soup. I get the bowl with the bay leaf floating in the broth, lucky me. She’s bundled me up in a quilted polyester housecoat and plopped what I think is a crochet tea cozy on my head. She warns, “I’ll kill you if you die on me. Capisce?” If anyone can shake a pointer finger at me, it’s Rose. Her gold rings streak before my bleary eyes. “Should we call your mother?” She picks the phone receiver up from the cradle.
“No,” I say. “My ma is like 9-1-1.” (Meaning, we never call her.)
After dark, I add slinking around Rose’s bedroom window to try and determine if she’s sleeping soundly to my nightly chores. I don’t want her to stay up worrying. She doesn’t need more grief. None of us need more grief. Hey Etta, How about everything becomes easier from here on in?
It is Thursday, May 17, and I’ve worked eleven shifts total and all of reality has collapsed. Days of the week don’t make sense anymore. Hours of the night, less so. I still plunge toilets. I still rake the bocce ball courts, collect empty bottles, chores, chores, more chores. And I talk to the dead. I lie about angels. I constantly remind myself that I should be terrified. I had a chance to tell the truth today at the lake, and instead I proclaimed the amusement park to be sacred. Way to be a hero.
Dolores and Hal, my rescuers, sit together at a picnic table in the dark, passing a cigarette back and forth. Dolores, I’ve learned, lives in the Winnebago set back in the trees. This is the first time I’ve seen her at night. I edge up to them and overhear Dolores speaking softly. “You can quit drinking, sure, don’t let another drop pass your lips. But until you deal with whatever it was that made you drink in the first place, you’ll still be stuck in your rut.” As I ease back from their conversation I hear her say something about “program” and “meetings.” Hal nods and nods.
“You swam the lake all day, now you’ll walk the grounds all night,” Dolores calls out to me as I’m U-turning away. “You know what they say about people who don’t sleep?”
I exhale an “mmmmh” sound in reply because what else is there to say? Is she asking me how I’m doing it? How I’m staying awake and moving for hours on end? And what do they say about people who don’t sleep? Where am I getting this maniacal energy from? Adrenaline rushes don’t last for ten hours, plus.
I’ve finished one of Ricky’s journals, cover to cover, and could now wire a lamp or fillet a rainbow trout, thanks to his exhaustive instructions. The second journal I currently pore over chronicles the last three months he was alive. There were no fishing trips to write about. No rabbit pens to build. I become more conflicted with each page and repeatedly pause and begin re-reading one of Ricky’s lists titled “Choice Ways to Naturally Dispose of the Body.” “The Body,” not “My Body,” I note. Ricky weighs the pros and cons of different methods of suicide from an environmental perspective. Except he never uses the term suicide. Rather, he talks of progetto scomparsa: roughly, project go missing, or disappear. Besides a couple of stronzi in reference to the Beta Tool Company, this is the only time Ricky writes in Italian. Was it less violent, or more, to switch into a second language? Was he unable to put the word “suicide” in writing?
I can barely say the word aloud. For how often I’ve thought about it, I never disclosed suicidal thoughts to a counsellor, not even to a friend. I doubt I could discuss decomposition of my own body either, whereas Ricky had written pages on the subject, as if it were as plain as building a bed frame. Methane and carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide released after death, it seems, upset Ricky. He wrote about the hole in the ozone. He included several newspaper and magazine clippings of the British Antarctica Survey of the hole, along with his own list of CFC products to avoid, with hairspray listed thrice. Ricky did not want his rotting corpse to widen that hole. There are a few scribbled then scratched-out equations that contain variables like Ricky’s body weight to the average time it takes a body to decompose. Now would be a good time to put this journal away, back in the very bottom of the trunk, bury it under bleach bottles and Band-Aid boxes. Surely somewhere, outside in the crisp night air, there’s loose garbage I should pick up. I keep reading.
Ricky stopped eating meat and dairy on January 6, 1990, a week or so before his death. He writes about vegans having a quicker “bowel transit time.” This would help render him into what he deemed “better compost.” Like a good only son, he did enjoy his mother’s Christmas and Epiphany meals. He writes four sentimental pages about his last midnight Christmas Eve fish feast, and the next day, his last tortellini in brodo after opening presents, and his last Epiphany dinner of anchovies in green sauce, braised veal, and panettone pudding. His meticulous way with details strongly translates into food writing, and I find myself nostalgic for home cooking.
Barbara can make most of these dishes, though I remember very few holidays when Nonni or Zii came to visit. There was tension. Even as a child I recognized it. I was born out of wedlock. Bastard baby and putana mother. And Barbara never bothered to find a husband after I was born. Now she’s too old for marriage. Putana zitella (spinster slut)! Most of our holidays, we ate our meals while sitting on the sofa watching The Sound of Music or The Charlie Brown Christmas. On an ambitious year, we’d drive over to Buffalo for Chinese food.
Rose must go to Florida next Christmas, I think. Or Hawaii. The first holiday alone is bound to hurt. I haven’t noticed any family checking in on Rose. Maybe it’s because I work at night? Maybe family members visit in the day? Or maybe they don’t come at all because Ricky committed suicide?
“Can you vermicompost flesh?” The question is followed by a lengthy passage on red wriggler worms and what types of bacteria they eat. Ricky wrote, “Flies and maggots are the key.” After putrefaction, flies and maggots can eat up to sixty percent of the body within a week. I read the phrases “mouth hooks” and “tissue-eating larva” and again I recognize that now is an appropriate time to stop reading. I feel small. The cabin, cavernous. I feel ill. The cabin—revolving in a gross nauseous circle.
No one should read Ricky’s journals. I might burn them, if only to make sure Rose never sees them. Does Rose need to consider whether dying near still, shallow water makes the decomposition process faster? No. Rose never, ever needs to know about her son’s final macabre thoughts.
Only one more page, I promise myself. January 7, 1990: Ricky had drawn a rather accomplished illustration of a ghost with Etta’s eyes and mouth. This is the closest thing I’ve seen in his journal that confirms his contact with her. “Kiss of Death” is written above her head in sharp heavy-metal block letters. I slam the journal closed.
You know exactly how he died, Etta. Tell me you didn’t have something to do with it. I direct my question at the painting. She hasn’t spoken to me all night. If you drove him to death, I’ll find out. My threat is merely an attempt to get her attention.
Outside, the darkness needles me. I hug my cardigan across my chest. Hal and Dolores have gone to bed, but I see Moustache Man’s light on in his trailer again. His face cranes to see me in the dark, then he shuts his blinds. I think my ears are ringing, then realize it’s the off-the-hook tone of the payphone. The receiver is dangling from its cord again. As soon as I hang it up, it rings. “Hello, hello,” I repeat, panicked. Nothing but dial tone.
I find a quarter in my pocket. Did I leave the cabin intending to make a call? I rub the coin between my thumb and forefinger before pushing it through the slot. I make a mental note to clean the dead flies off the illuminated “Telephone” sign as I wait on hold for the bartender to find Tamara.
“How you feeling, Star?” she asks with the boom of rock music behind her. “Everything all right?”
I didn’t prepare for her question—everything all right? I lean my forehead against the phone booth’s scuffed Plexiglass wall. She’s asking because she saw me faint. Because she knows I’m afraid. Because I am a freak. Because I’m about to flip my shit. “I was just thinking about you, Tamara,” I say, cool as a cucumber.
Hours later, I am tending the flowers growing in tractor tire planters in front of Rose’s house when Tamara Matveev arrives. No garden gloves, my filthy hands sunk into the soil beneath the marigolds. I wanted her to come, but as she pulls up in a ridiculously cool mint-green classic Ford Galaxy 500, I realize I have no idea what to say. I am paralyzed, squatting between the flower beds. Lucky greets her before I can even cobble together a “hello.”
“Rise and shine,” Lucky says, as if he knows her, as if they see each other every morning. Tamara walks hesitantly up the walkway, eyeing me as Lucky skips up and takes her hand. Her hair is up in a messy bun that she surely styled without bothering to look in a mirror. Her dress is shiny electric blue, a work dress, but she’s swapped her heels for a pair of Converse and mismatched socks. It’s the socks—one plain white tennis sock and the other with a pink pom pom sewn on the ankle—that rouse me from my numbness. “I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here this early,” I apologize. “Looks like you’ve been up all night too. You didn’t have to come.”
“I wanted to see how you were doing. You sounded a bit … on the phone.” A bit what, I wonder. What adjective best describes how I sound right now? Tamara notices my discomposure. “Let’s just go for coffee and talk. Easy, right?” she says. “I’ll take you to Tim Hortons.”
At the mention of Tim Hortons, Lucky bounces into Rose’s house, singing, “Donuts. Dough. Nuts.” We both laugh, the mood lightened just enough for me to accept that she is here, that she showed up despite my ongoing fumbling. I hug her with my grubby hands. My anxiety-sweaty body meets her cigarette smoke-scented hair; my work jeans and old cotton T-shirt meet her cheap spandex dress.
I see Rose and Lucky peeking through the screen door and wave; motion them to come out and meet Tamara. I may be off my rocker right now, but maybe she will be my girlfriend, the love of my strange fucking life. I’d better learn how to introduce her to people. “We knew each other in high school,” I explain.
Rose smiles and shakes Tamara’s hand, though she does not extend an invitation to come in for a cup of coffee. She keeps smiling and nodding strangely as we get into Tamara’s car. There’s a tautness in her voice as she calls after us, “You girls get some breakfast, now.”
“Mrs Esposito’s met me a handful of times. Last time was Ricky’s funeral,” Tamara tells me. And here I thought Rose’s tone was because she suspects we’re queer. Reality check, it’s not all about me.
Dawn hasn’t crested the tree line, and patches of light hit the windshield intermittently through the trees. I pull the sun visor down to find a perfect pink lipstick print on the tiny vanity mirror, and I wonder who else has sat here. The crank handle is stiff as I attempt to roll down the passenger-side window. The classic rock radio station plays “Fast Car.” I sing along for a few lines.
“Tracy Chapman fan?” Tamara nudges me from across the long bench seat. Her other hand is draped effortlessly over the big steering wheel. She sings a few lines in a voice that is both terrible and charming. I undo my seat belt so I can wriggle closer to her. My shoulder rubs against her shoulder, and I catch myself thinking of Etta. Not really a thought as in contemplation, more like a sensation. Like Etta has left a tactile residue on my skin. I feel touch and there she is. I tip my nose into Tamara’s hair, as if the hairspray and cigarette smell can trounce Etta’s existence.
Then, without warning, as if she knows there is a moment to spoil, she stands in the centre of the road. So bright and lucid, I’m sure Tamara can see her too. We careen into her only for a blink, long enough for me to cry out as something thumps the car’s bumper. Another blink and Tamara is swerving sharply. I lurch, my shoulder slams the passenger side door. The car swerves a half circle.
“Shit.” Tamara slams on the brakes. “Are you okay?” She’s got her right arm stretched out across my chest, as if to hold me in place as she braked. “I think I hit a bunny.” Behind us a young rabbit lies in the spot where Etta just stood, the rabbit’s tawny fur crushed into the pavement. “Did it just move its back leg?”
“It’s gotta be dead, Tamara. I think it went under the back tire.”
“What if it’s not dead? I should check. Put it out of its misery.”
“Don’t,” I clamp my hand down on Tamara’s bare thigh. “Rabbits around here got diseases. Rabbit fever.”
“Rabbit fever,” she repeats dubiously before our lips crash. We both know we are about to have disaster sex. Without coy check-ins or permissive flirtations, our bodies draw together. Bobbypins ping out of her hair as I rake both my hands through it. The neck of my T-shirt complains as it rips. Without pause, she slides two of my dirt-stained fingers in her mouth, then guides them down between her legs. “This is a messed-up way to start a relationship,” she says.
“I promise I’ll call you tomorrow.” I let myself be hypnotized by the even bluer panties under Tamara’s electric blue dress. The colour is obscene next to her tan skin. I watch my fingers disappear inside this blue like a sleight-of-hand magic trick. I trace my pointer finger up and down her slit, that flawless innie I was awed by at the strip club. Bikini stubble rubs the back of my palm. “I promise I’ll call you. I promise you,” I coo in her ear. Etta darts in and out of my peripheral vision as I touch Tamara Matveev. Each time she does, my eagerness surges. I see the muscles in my arm twitch. I hardly know if I’m making declarations to Tamara or to Etta. Tamara’s raspy moans goad me further. How hard is too hard for the first time? She kicks at the car window. Etta’s reflection appears on the glass. A fist beats against my chest and I want it to be Etta’s. I want Etta’s unnatural weight to bear down on me. “Fuck,” Tamara says. “Fuckin’ there there right there.”
An hour later, we are sticky hot and severely sleep-deprived in the back seat of her Ford Galaxy 500, which sits only a few feet from the morning’s road kill. “I still want to know how you’re doing, Starla,” she asks. “We were going to talk, remember?”
A series of impressive lies flip through my head. Then, “I’m being haunted,” I admit. I figure my soon-to-be new girlfriend (and, knowing me, soon-to-be ex-girlfriend) deserves my honesty. “By the ghost of a woman who died on the Cyclone roller coaster. I’m pretty sure Ricky was haunted by her too.”
I worry Tamara is too exhausted to react. She calmly rubs my back in slow, comforting strokes, and says nothing. What is there to say? This truly is a messed-up way to start a relationship.