Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, thought Maggie. I’m going to write a book about you. You and your friends and your blowjob jokes.
Maggie shrugged, let her lids drop down halfway, then dropped her chin to her shoulder, rubbed it against the raw polyester of her uniform. It was one of her patented shy-girl moves that kept people at bay. Look how delicate she is. Don’t ruin it with too many questions.
“Don’t forget us when you’re famous, all right?”
“All right.”
She heard him say as she walked away, “Cute girl,” and when she looked back, he was staring at her like he would have preferred her to the eggs that morning.
After she had married the ketchup bottles and totaled her checks and unbound her hair from her barrettes, she walked home dreaming of Mr. Pollack. She imagined he was hiding in the trees, watching her, until she motioned to him to join her. And then finally he did, he was walking next to her, whispering filthy things in her ear.
AT NIGHT her father ordered another pizza and insisted she tell him about her day.
Maybe there’s something interesting at this country club, he mused, his fingers to his chin. Maybe I could get something out of it. What are the members like?
Her father’s books usually took place in testosterone-laden backdrops, like war zones or fishing boats, horse ranches or mountain ranges. The End of Big Sky Country was the title of his latest novel, which Maggie had yet to read. She started to scan the back cover but put the book back on the shelf when she read the headline, “Sometimes a battle for land is best fought hand to hand.”
I doubt it, said Maggie. They’re all into playing golf and being Jewish.
He was quiet after that. She knew he would be. Her dad used to be Jewish, but didn’t like to talk about it. She had seen a picture of him from his bar mitzvah, hanging on a wall at her grandmother’s house. He was wearing a yarmulke and a gray three-piece suit, standing behind a podium with a serious smile that displayed a mass of braces.
But then he went to college, started smoking pot for the next decade, and decided religion was the opiate of the masses. He became this numb mélange of academia, alcohol, and agnosticism, until all that was left in his life was a generic gift-giving winter holiday.
There is nothing interesting about any of these people, said Maggie. Trust me.
She knew she was lying, though. Joey Pollack Jr. had begun to mesmerize her. He was the center of her universe for forty-five minutes a day. She waited to see what atrocity would come out of his mouth next. Would he be sexist today? Or would his thinly veiled racism be making a visit? (He had a severe preoccupation with the length and width of the penises belonging to black professional athletes.) Or would he be showing blatant disrespect for the mother of his children today? He was so awesome. He was the most horrible man she had ever met in her entire life, and she was kind of in love with him.
The day he said the one thing he regretted about having kids was what it did to his wife’s breasts (“Down to here,” he said, his hands, palms outstretched, dropping to his waist), Maggie went to the 7-Eleven after work and bought a box of razor blades. She didn’t know what she was going to do with them. I just want to hold them, she thought. I just want them in my hands. As she paid for them, she glanced up at the security camera. Captured on film. Some waitress in a cheap uniform, and her razor blades. She knew she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she felt like a criminal nonetheless.
Up the stairs, into the bathroom, she locked the door, pulled a blade out of the clear plastic box. She held it to her finger, she held it to her forearm. She pulled off her shoes and pantyhose and pressed it up against her knee, then foot, then calf. Flat silver blade against pink young flesh. The bathroom tiles were pink and white, and alternated like a checkerboard. She cut her calf, only a little bit, so there was only a little bit of blood.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her. She didn’t want to cut herself. She wanted to cut someone else.
ROBERT HAS WALKED across the room. It’s their living room, in their house. They live in Westchester, where Robert had always dreamed of living. Maggie has decorated each room lovingly. She loves to shop, and not just for herself, but for other people. She’s what you would call giving. You want to make Maggie happy, just give her a credit card and let her go. That’s what Robert always says about her. It’s easy to make her happy. Let her give.
You’re freaking me out, he says.
Good, she thinks.
You never had a summer where you went a little crazy? Where you drank every day, or you had lots of one-night stands, or you did too many drugs? Where you sunk lower than you ever thought you could? And the only reason you woke up in the morning was just so you could do it all over again?
I didn’t want to kill anyone, he says.