Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [74]
Outside her bedroom I realize I’m staring at a photo of my first father, Frank, with his plastic trident and the padding of a hockey goalie. That’s how he dressed in those early Glad days. I touch the glass over his face. He had the slight cleft chin I have, and we shared the small gap between our front teeth, as if we both had something that was trying to split us down the middle. There are no audio recordings of him, and I have no memory of his voice. He doesn’t speak directly to me in that way that dead people sometimes offer persistent advice or ridicule once they’re gone, a little comfort. And I suddenly have this feeling that I haven’t asked the right questions about him. So I don’t know if I got my rebellious nature from him—if there’s a logical excuse in the blood. Maybe he got lost in history books the way I do. I decide I’m going to quiz Allison for more details. She loves it when I ask about my fathers. I think those nostalgic moments assuage a lot of guilt. And maybe it will keep us off the topic of Uber for a while.
I think I hear her calling me from the bathroom but maybe it’s the TV—it’s SO loud. I knock on the door and when she doesn’t answer I knock a few more times. After a while I push on the door and it comes open.
She’s slumped near the toilet, head down, her back to me. All I see is the form of her curved spine in her lemon-colored nightgown and her legs sprawled out. My heart drops away, my head, my stomach, everything drops, and I think she could be doing one of her faux deaths, so I’m calling to her loudly. Maybe she’s taken a small combination of alcohol and prescription drugs that have put her in a stupor. She did that once before, and she slumped just this way.
I don’t even see the blood at first. Everywhere and I don’t see it. I don’t know how that can happen. The lights are those kind that last for months. And I wonder, did I just think that, about the lights? I can’t imagine I’d think about that.
And then I realize a phone receiver is pressed against my ear. It occurs to me that I’ve dialed Tommy’s private number like he’s working out at the gym or took his car in for a wash where they have brushes the size of small fir trees and soap that changes colors as it activates—things Thad loves. Maybe I was thinking if Tommy heard my voice pushing to get out of my chest—trying to tell him about Allison—that he would rush home from wherever he is and cover her up so I don’t have to be the one to do this.
But I’ve got it now. Tommy’s dead and he can’t do a thing about Allison.
I’m still here holding the receiver against my ear, right outside Allison’s bathroom now, thinking I should find some Kleenex and blow my nose and maybe go downstairs and wash my face and put the receiver down, all of those things in some logical sequence so I can get the dial tone to stop ringing in my head. I don’t think I’m trying to call the police. I wouldn’t do that unless she had a pulse.
The walls that she had once painted a mushroom color, the white sink and ceiling, the toilet cover she has washed and bleached by the woman who comes in to do the twice-weekly cleaning, the towels Allison has made sure to replace as soon as one thread comes loose or the smallest drop of makeup won’t scrub out, those things are all covered in blood. I can see that now. When I crouch down, I say her name softly so she won’t get mad at me. As I move around her, I finally see her face.
I have to step into the sticky blood to hold the wrist without the gun and feel for a pulse. I realize, as I back out of myself and float up to the ceiling, that there is no hurry to call anyone. I take a clean towel from the shelves and cover her head. Another towel over her legs where her skirt has risen up.
And I think about how every three or four months she gives those imperfect towels to the woman who cleans—the woman Caesar’s sends—it seems they’re always changing these women, and before they change we send them