I am delighted to announce that Elsie’s ashes have sold to Mr. Angus Hammond for $2.3 million. Thank you to all who bid. Your generosity will benefit Pygmy Three-Toed Sloth Preservation. This is the best way to honor Elsie, who taught all of us to protect the endangered.
Then Clare checks her bank account. Last night, her driver’s seat window was smashed by someone who evidently found nothing worth stealing inside the car. Clare’s account confirms that she must choose to mend the glass or pay her rent. She can’t afford both; Elsie paid her just above minimum wage. During her years as an assistant, Clare had to offend so many people throughout the industry on Elsie’s behalf, she doubts she’ll ever be employed in Los Angeles again. Sipping a vase of water, she watches attention accumulate on her tweet, feels the notifications like balm on chapped skin.
PART IV
Altogether Now
C12: And if consciousness offers no more appeal, reasons the widowed logger, who can blame you for falling asleep before ten?
A ping from Rate Your Date (Mature Users!)
LEGG YPEGG y: im sure he doesnt want anything to do with a nobody like me but i just want to say this is a kind man. really made me hope again and also laugh
C10: Alone with the family laptop, the teenager learns an important life lesson: poor Wi-Fi is never more distressing than it is during video sex with a much older stranger, who has not paid you up front for your services.
“Would’ve—refund—good,” says the man.
“What? It cut out.”
“Said—asked for—good.”
“What? I’m sorry.”
“Never fuckin’—” says the man. “I’m—here.”
The man hangs up.
The teenager sits on his bed for a few minutes in silence. Then he pinches his soiled boxers from the sheets, tosses them in the hamper, and goes to the bathroom to clean up. Afterward, he dons a bathrobe, envisioning himself as a billionaire with a hot tub and a cigar. Plaid and soft, the bathrobe was a gift from Santa a few years back. His mom never told him, and he never asked, and still she signs Santa’s name on Christmas gifts. The robe is a relic of his childhood, and to wear such a thing at a time like this feels nice. The teenager loves his mother ferociously.
A dog outside. Music—something percussive—from a few floors below. Some boys are yelling again. They’re always yelling. He’s seen them in the lobby before, where they often make videos of indeterminate content. One of them is vigorously attractive, another decently so, the third not at all. But the third seems sweet. He’s the only one who ever smiles at the teenager. Those boys are a little older than he is, but they could have been his friends, in another life. What struck him most was their energy—they seemed to be pumped full of color and noise, a force strong enough to power itself down. He never worked up the courage to talk to them.
The walls of the Rabbit Hutch are so thin, you can hear everyone’s lives progress like radio plays. For this reason, the teenager turned the volume down on his laptop before the man called. But it was an unnecessary measure—the man was silent throughout.
The secret conducts a renovation inside his body, bulldozing whole walls of his childhood, preparing space for something new. He doesn’t know what it will be, but he watches enough French films to know that it will be ravishing. Reconstruction is inevitable—he accepts this—and there’s no rebirth without death. He turns off all his electronics and feeds his stunning beta fish. So many people crammed inside this building, the teenager marvels, and nobody knows how vast his night has been.
C8: In the bathroom, the mother stares at her husband as he brushes his teeth. She has always loved the way he brushes his teeth: methodically, sure to spend thirty seconds on each row. He wears no shirt, just boxers. She studies his appendicitis scar.
“I’m afraid of Elijah’s eyes,” she blurts.
Her husband spits. “What?”
“Eli,” she says. “I’m afraid of his eyes. I’m so afraid I can barely breathe. It feels like a panic attack all day, and I can’t look at him—you’re supposed to look at your baby, I know that, but I just can’t, because of the eyes, can’t even think about the eyes, panic every time I do, panicking now because I’m thinking about the eyes, just picturing them, and nobody—nobody prepares you for this, nobody talks about it online, I haven’t found a single person who feels this way about their baby, or babies in general, and I’ve been searching the internet all day, but there’s something wrong with me, something really wrong with me, because if there’s nobody else on the whole fucking internet like you, that’s when you know you’re in trouble, that’s when you know—”
“Oh, babe,” says her husband, hugging her to his chest, pressing her arms to her side, just as they swaddle Eli. She’s weeping again, hyper-ventilating. He smooths her hair. “How long you felt like this?”
“Since—he—was—born.”
“And you’ve kept it to yourself all this time?”
She nods, sobbing.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’d think I was a—a bad mother if you—if you knew—if you—”
“You know what I think?”
She sobs.
“I think you’re an amazing mother. I think you’re the Mother of the Year. And I also think we should get you some medicine. Some therapy, maybe. I’ve been saving up for it—no, listen, we can afford this now—and I think it’s time to make an appointment, okay? I was talking to Mike, and he says his prescription costs something like forty dollars a month, and he doesn’t have insurance for it, either. If you want it, we can do it. You don’t have to feel like this, Hope. And let’s get you some company, too. What about my mother? I know Kara is working all the time, but what about Val? She probably wants some company, too. And her kid is—what? A couple months older than Eli? Maybe your mom could fly out here a few weeks early. It’s hard to spend so much time alone, Hope. What do you think? Can we get some medicine for you? Therapy? Company? Would that help?”
He holds her for several minutes, until she begins to breathe normally. She nods.
“Good.”
Eventually, her husband starts to laugh. The laughter rises from deep in his chest, and soon it overtakes him.
“What?”
“It’s just—I’m sorry; it’s just—”
“What?”
“It’s just so funny.” He covers his mouth with his hands. “His”—a fit of laughter—“eyes.”
The mother hesitates at first, but before she knows it, she is laughing, too. Wildly. Uncontrollably. Ecstatically.
“They are creepy,” he says.
This makes her laugh harder.
“No, no, no.” She laughs. “No!”
“It’s extra funny because . . .” her husband begins, still amused, wiping a tear from her eye.
“What?”
“It’s just . . .” He laughs again, shoulders shaking. She can feel his laughter reverberate through them both as he holds her. “It’s—”
“What?”
“Everybody says he’s got your eyes.”
C6: Like most people, Reggie does not want to touch dead mice. Like most people, Reggie gets through the day by believing he and all his loved ones are exempt from mortality, and he hates when death asserts itself like this.
“Quick,” says Ida. “Before they go to bed.”
Mouse or spouse, a voice tells Reggie. Mouse or spouse. The voice sounds like that of his fifth-grade teacher, a woman with black hair, a limp, and psoriasis, with whom he was infatuated. She often made up rhymes to help her students remember facts. She smelled like coal tar—like a fresh street. What a woman! Reggie heaves himself out of his armchair, pushes his feet into his flip-flops, and walks to the balcony. So far, his seventies have felt like the last mile of a marathon—which he used to run, back when his body was his. Everything aches and dehydration reigns. His vision is scattered, unfocused. He keeps walking into rooms and forgetting why. This frightens him, until he inevitably forgets the fear.
“Fine,” he grumbles. “Fine.”
He slips his hand into a plastic grocery bag like an oven mitt, slides the door, and steps onto the concrete balcony. The night that settles around him is the kind of Midwestern night he loves—hot and humid, fireflies blinking, a purple sky, storming off and on. Decades ago, Ida, the kids, and he spent the Fourth of July with his sister Brandy in Northern California. Reggie was working as an electrical technician for Zorn Automobiles at the time. It was before they lost the house. Even though finances weren’t as tight as they were about to become, Ida and Reggie had saved for a year to afford the trip, and the children were ecstatic—they had never left the state.
Throughout the visit, his sister arranged her clothes, voice, and pos-ture to communicate superiority, so proud of herself for leaving their town, as though it were a maximum-security prison. As though it took more than a plane ticket, a cosmetology degree, and a dainty face for her to find another life. They sat around a table in Brandy’s backyard and Reggie’s kids wouldn’t stop shivering, moaning about the cold.
“It’s July,” complained Mike, the oldest.