Sometimes Rachel
chapter 2 - fisher of men
I come home from work and Rachel sits on my bed with long yellow legs twisted beneath her as if broken. She wears her hair pulled back to expose her face, her scars. She's naked and a little drunk. She regards me warily, as if she doesn’t quite recognize me. Her one good eye is an impossibly dark blue, like a kid’s marble. The rebuilt left eye is pale and bright as the tip of a knife, and it wanders. She has small curved feet. Pale web of stretch marks on her belly. Breasts too large against her ribs. She has poor circulation and her skin is always cold to the touch. She bruises easily. Veins stand out in her arms. Her muscles ripple like shadows. She touches herself constantly. Her thumbs are double jointed and she pulls them into impossible positions. Rachel creates silence, heavy and bright. She picks at a scab on her wrist.
Where is the kid? she says, finally.
I told you. I took him to stay with my sister.
She stares at me with that marble blue eye.
Two days ago, I say.
Why?
Because you asked me to.
What did you tell her about me?
Nothing, I say.
And she nods, as if she knows I’m lying.
The bedroom is cool and dark, with squares of red velvet nailed over the windows. Grinch sleeps in the doorway, growling in his dreams. The television is on, a blue and white strobe. Droning sirens and muted laughter. I kneel between Rachel's open thighs, my mouth numb and wet. Her stark shaved pubic bone is hard as a tumor, her clitoris strange and elusive. She tells me to stop, finally. I kiss her mouth gently, as if kissing a sore. Blue jean and soft drink and underwear ads. Her arms are spread apart like dead branches against a white sky. Basketball scores. Her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The weather report. She doesn't make a sound when I come.
In the morning she crouches naked on the toilet, smoking a cigarette, while I shave. Black stubble against the side of the sink. I hold the razor under water. Her face appears behind me. Her hair loose, falling to her shoulders, brown with streaks of blonde and white. Her good eye watches me in the mirror. The other one wanders. She reaches for a tube of lipstick left behind by a girl who waits tables where I work. Rachel jabs at her crooked mouth and the lipstick is brown.
I lied, she says.
About what?
Owen. He didn't leave me.
My hand slips and I cut myself. Rachel stops with the lipstick. She stares at the blood running down my cheek.
Are you kidding? I say.
He was at the clinic, she says. Selling plasma.
The cut swells with blood as I rinse the blade.
Let's go out for breakfast, she says.
The outdoor patio at a diner called Black Lagoon. Rachel smokes a cigarette, staring at her water glass like it's a crystal ball. The waitress brings coffee and toast. I reach for the butter and Rachel abruptly pushes her water glass off the table, smashing it against the rock floor.
There was a bug in it, she says. A dead bug.
Do you want mine?
No.
The waitress approaches with broom and dustpan to clean up the mess but Rachel cuts her apart with one glance and tells her to leave it. The waitress backs away, uneasy. Rachel is calm. She crushes out her cigarette. The morning is hot, blinding. I am unpleasantly sober. It's been five months since I had a drink and I'm a slug on the edge of a razor. I chew a piece of ice and look at Rachel. She is at once beautiful and destroyed, and she's a mother. Her name is not Rachel. It used to be Sally and she has given no explanation for the change. The guilt I feel when I look at her is irrational, I know. And still it staggers me. If I had called her, she might not have hooked up with Owen. She might never have gone through that windshield. I dump more sugar into my coffee.
Low buzz of locusts. A plague of Japanese tourists crowd the patio around us and now I remember. The middle of August in Memphis. This is death week. The King went belly up some twenty years ago. They found him bloated and stinking beside the toilet on a hot night. The zealots have come from every corner of the planet, as they do every summer, to pay their respects at the tomb of Elvis. Broken glass glitters in the sun. Rachel points a finger at the tourists, cocking it like a gun.
Pow, she says. The tourists regard her nervously.
Sally, I say.
Don't call me that.
I think you should apologize to the waitress.
She flicks her cigarette at me and narrowly misses hitting me in the face.
Clouds race across the sky black as smoke. Thunder. We make it to the apartment just as the storm opens up. The machine is blinking, a message from my sister Zoe. The baby needs diapers, she says. Her voice is quiet and cold. Grinch paces the apartment, nervous about the thunder. I find Rachel cleaning the kitchen. The bright smell of bleach. She uses bleach on everything. She spills it on her hands. She runs her fingers through her hair, which accounts for the streaks of yellow and white.
Your hair is going to fall out, I say.
She is on her knees, scrubbing at the floor with a blue sponge. The floor is perfectly clean.
That was Zoe, I say. On the machine.
Rachel looks up, hair falling around her face. The rain still comes down in gray sheets outside the windows and she looks almost normal in soft half light. She wears a pair of my old jeans, faded slipping down over her hips. I see the edge of black underpants, a slash of brown belly. I feel myself getting hard.
Close your eyes, she says.
Why?
Play nice, she says.
I sigh and shut my eyes.
Can you see me? she says. I'm on my back, on the floor. I'm bleeding from the mouth and you're fucking me to shreds. Can you see me?
I can see you, I say.
Open your eyes, she says.
I resurface and try to control my breath. I don't know what's wrong with me. I turn on the overhead light and now I see the shadows of her face.
Come on, she says. Hit me.
I'm not going to hit you, Rachel.
Then go see your sister, she says.
Rachel dips the sponge into the bucket of bleach and water. She makes a fist.
Do you want to come with me?
No, she says.
It's a short walk to Zoe's place. The storm lets up and everything is steaming. I stop at the Pig for diapers and cigarettes and ice cream. I desperately need the sugar. I realize I'm sweating. I feel claustrophobic in my clothes. Zoe lives in a garage apartment, down an alley. The smell of honeysuckle. Two dogs sniffing at a rotten head of lettuce. One of them looks up growling and I kick a rock in their direction. I can't believe how expensive diapers are.
I find Zoe in the bedroom, Rachel's baby sleeping beside her. Three years old. He wears a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. It looks like a dress. Zoe wears white bikini shorts and a man's blue shirt. Her legs are thin and pale. She is a year younger than me. Asleep she could be sixteen. She is sweating in her sleep, the blonde hair at her temples damp. Zoe is not my blood. She is my stepsister. Her father, who I know as Big Jim, married my mother when we were five and six. Zoe and I grew up in the same house and for a while we took baths together, but then we stopped.
I kiss her on the ear whisper, Zoe, wake up.
She opens her eyes and touches a finger to her lips. She doesn't want to wake him. I nod and go to the kitchen. The apartment is dark. A fan pushes air back and forth. I fill a glass with water and find empty ice trays in the freezer. I leave the ice cream out to soften. Zoe comes from the bedroom with a hairbrush in one hand. Her nose is sunburned. She has skin delicate as a peach. Her shirt hangs open. The lace edge of her bra.
It's impossible to get him to sleep, she says.
I brought the diapers.
We were up half the night, she says. I thought babies were supposed to cry themselves to sleep, but he just cries harder. Zoe looks at me, smiling. I love having him here, she says.
He's not normal, I say.
She brushes her hair with short even strokes.
He's three, I say. Shouldn't he be out of diapers?
I don't know, she says.
He doesn't even talk.
Look at his mother. Zoe bites the word.
I was thirteen when Zoe found a sick raccoon in the alley, half dead in the sun. Blood in one eye. Black ants in gray fur. The belly hard and swollen and Zoe said it must be pregnant. I said no, it's dying. It would be in the shade otherwise. Zoe made me swear not to tell Big Jim because he'd kill it. She stayed with that coon all day. In case the babies came, she said. She got a black umbrella from the hall closet to block the sun. She put water in a Frisbee but the coon never took a drink. Then it was time for supper. Zoe was a nervous wreck until after the news when mom and Big Jim went to sleep. She climbed out the bathroom window and didn't ask me to go with her. I woke up and found her in my room, crying. The coon was dead. I pulled her into bed with me and told her a story. In the morning there was dirt in my bed. She buried that coon with her hands.
Together we sit on the couch, listening to the fan blow dead air around. Zoe puts her foot on my leg. I try to feed her ice cream but she shakes her head.
Are you working? I say.
Not so much, lately, she says.
Zoe is a photographer. Portraits of restless children, the odd wedding. I stroke her foot. She was never ticklish.
Do you want to keep him? I say.
Zoe plays with a ring on her finger. What about Rachel?
I think it's what she wants.
I don't have a lot of money, for food and stuff.
Don't worry. I have money in the bank.
It won't last, she says.
Something will happen, I say. Something always happens.
I'll keep him, she says. Of course I will.
She kisses the corner of my mouth. I still hold her foot in my hands, pale as an egg. Hundreds of brittle bones under the skin. I push her foot away and go to the kitchen. I fill the ice trays. Henry wakes up screaming and Zoe rips open the box of diapers.
On the street I see Owen lurking in a 7/11 parking lot. He's talking to a couple skate punks, waving his hands wildly and no doubt spitting. The skate punks are edging away from him and I don't think they're enjoying his story. I duck into the Piggly Wiggly, hoping Owen hasn't seen me. I don't need anything but the place reassures me. The way the electric doors suck open. The sudden noise of cash registers and boys throwing open the paper bags. The smell of dust and oil from the parking lot crashing with bread and flowers. I could buy flowers for Rachel but she would laugh at me. I could buy dog food for Grinch. On wooden benches along the front window, old men recline in the air conditioning. A muzak version of Dear Prudence trembles from hidden loudspeakers.
A girl comes through the doors in a yellow dress.
She is about sixteen and limping, hopping on one foot like she has a rock in her shoe. She holds a slip of paper in one hand. She examines it, standing with bad leg bent. Dipping her head like a yellow bird. Her lips move slightly. She limps off toward the produce, a red shopping basket dangling from her wrist. From behind her hair is like Zoe's and I drift along behind her purely by instinct. The limp grows more pronounced and she crashes into an elderly woman. I'm sorry, she says. Her voice a bright whisper. Then with a backward arm the girl takes down a pyramid of granny smith apples. The other shoppers keep moving, ignoring the girl in the yellow dress. Apples roll and twirl in all directions. The girl sits down abruptly and takes off her shoe. The yellow dress slips up her long thigh, apples stopping green around her. She studies her bare foot.
Do you need some help? I say.
She chews her lip. No.
What's wrong with your foot?
She glances at me, fearless and pretty.
Think I sprained it.
How'd you do that?
She flashes her teeth. Softball. I was sliding into second.
She is very young.
Let me see, I say.
She shrugs and I crouch next to her. I examine her foot without touching it. She smells of mint. The ankle is swollen, not badly.
Can you move it? I say.
Yeah. But it hurts.
I help her stand up. Her hand is small and slightly damp. The top of her head comes to my throat. I tell her to put ice on the ankle when she gets home. She nods. Over her shoulder I see Owen, grinning and bobbing his head. He comes toward us, an open carton of chocolate milk in one hand. He touches his filthy hat and the girl takes a step back.
Ma'am, he says.
Thanks, she says to me. Then drifts away.
Owen picks up a fallen apple and turns to watch the girl.
Not half bad, he says. He chomps the apple.
She's a kid, I say.
Old enough to fight back, he says.
What do you want, Owen?
Owen offers me the chocolate milk. The cardboard opening looks chewed on. I shake my head. Owen's hair is stiff with grime. There's a moist red sore in the corner of his mouth. His shirt is stained brown at the armpits, and he stinks. He starts walking and I follow. I tell myself he is not my responsibility, and still I follow. Owen leaves his chewed apple core on a shelf. He opens a bag of cheese puffs and insists on sharing them.
Technically, I say. You're shoplifting.
Bullshit. Owen's lips are orange. I'm sampling, he says. The same thing as flipping through a magazine.
He keeps moving and helpless I follow.
You know that puppy, says Owen. The other day?
Yeah.
I got him from the pound. Because Sally said she was lonely.
What happened to it? I say.
She mainly ignored it. Then one day it's dead.
How did it die?
Owen shoves in another mouthful of cheese puffs. He chews violently.
Are you saying she killed that puppy? I say.
You seem a righteous man, Travis. Ain't you?
What?
Owen leans in close. Are you a fisher of men? he says. Or a fisherman?
What the fuck are you talking about?
I was wondering, Owen says. If you might know where my Sally is now?
No, I say. I don't know where Sally is.
My Sally's gone, says Owen. Like a ghost.
I give Owen the high hat and get the fuck out of Pig. When I reach the apartment, the front door is locked and Rachel is gone. Grinch goes bugshit when I walk in. I guess he's glad to see me. I haven't given Rachel a key yet, because she hasn't asked for one. The fire escape. She went out the fire escape. I make a tomato sandwich and eat it sitting on the bed. I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. Throw water on my hair. I have to be at work soon. I try not to worry about Rachel. Tell myself I don't want to know where she is, what she's doing.
I tend bar at a cavernous industrial shithole called, appropriately, the Hole. The band hasn't started yet and the crowd is thin. The other bartender is out back doing coke. I slog beer and ashes along the bar with a towel. A girl with blurry red eyes and yellow hair takes a stool before me. She orders a draft. The tap is slow. The beer is cheap and warm.
What's your name? I say.
She's high, twitching. Her upper lip is pierced with a silver ring and she sucks on it. She wears a transparent gauze dress. Her belly is curved and hard. Heavy breasts. Swollen nipples.
I stare. Are you pregnant?
The girl shrugs. Fuck off.
She pays for the beer with a handful of change.
Zoe calls at eleven. The music is loud, booming. I can barely hear her. My own voice seems to bounce back at me. The mouthpiece is sticky and wet. Zoe screams and I understand just three words. Rachel is here. I turn to the crowd. Distended arms and hair and faces.