Don Foster
Salvation
First thing I noticed was Tyler’s mom shoveling snow in Angie’s red high heels. Then I looked down and saw Tyler on the stoop, cinching his flannel to keep the cold out. His face looked jaundiced, but it was just the streetlight charging it in a yellowish glow. I cracked my upstairs window to hear better.
“Ma, what’re you doing?” Tyler asked.
She plowed her shovel through the powder, wobbling as she tossed the snow. She had me sweating, worrying she’d break Angie’s heel. Tyler descended the steps—slipping and regaining his balance on the last one—and took the shovel.
“Give me back my shovel,” she said.
“You wear boots when you shovel, ma. Boots. And what the hell are you doing out here? It’s Christ—what time is it?” Tyler glanced across the street at a neighbor’s truck warming up, exhaust billowing from the tailpipe. He looked back at his mom. “The sun ain’t even up, and you’re out here in heels trying to break a hip.”
A lump formed in my chest. Would he start asking questions? Where she got them, et cetera? But he didn’t. He only stared at them sadly, shaking his head. “Christ almighty, what did I do to deserve this?”
A fog settled over her face, and I thought that’s it, Mrs. Stinton, do what you do best—forget. Forget your son. Forget yesterday. Forget everything. She knit her brows, the simple act reminding her that she had left her anger somewhere. “Give that back to me!”
“Ma, quit yelling. You’ll wake the neighborhood.” Tyler switched the shovel to the opposite hand so she couldn’t get at it. With his other hand, he steered her toward the apartment.
“What about the snow?” she asked, glancing back at the sidewalk.
“You ain’t got to worry about the snow. I’ll take care of it.” He propped the shovel against the siding and gripped her forearm to steady her as she took the steps. They entered the house, disappearing from view, but I could still hear them downstairs.
“Yeah, you always say that,” she said, “but you don’t take care of nothing.”
I closed my window, but softly so the sound wouldn’t register. I felt for Tyler. If only Mrs. Stinton realized how much work she was, but she couldn't. Just last week she almost burnt the place down putting socks in the oven. And the week before she put tinfoil in the microwave. The goddamn smoke detector didn’t work but, somehow, the ancient fire extinguisher did.
I took two steps, and I was back on my mattress. Two steps got you anywhere in this room—the window, the dresser, the door. That was the size of my life now, a postage stamp. I was renting a room; a room I had found on Craigslist. Tyler had been looking for someone he could split the rent with. The bigger bedroom downstairs was Tyler’s since he was here first, but he relinquished it to his mom when he moved her in. He now occupied the living room, his stuff pushed up against the wall—Milligan Auto Parts shirts, gray workpants, socks, underwear, a skateboard I’d never seen in motion. He kept it all pushed up against the wall so his mom wouldn’t trip. He slept in the recliner most nights because it was more comfortable than having his legs dangle over the edge of the loveseat. But during the day, that’s where she camped out, on the recliner. Gave her the best view of the television. She’d sit there all day, watching reruns of court TV and trashy talk shows, forgetting to eat, drink, and use the bathroom.
As I pulled the blanket to my chin, I heard the recliner spring back. Tyler probably had Angie’s heels off by now, massaging his mom’s feet, trying to circulate the purple out of them. What the hell was I thinking leaving Angie’s shoes down there? I wasn’t, that’s the problem. Death was a spider getting fat on those left behind. It’d suck out every last bit of brain jelly and leave you nothing but a heart. That was me, all heart and not a goddamn braincell in sight. I was busy lamenting my condition when I heard Mrs. Stinton say, “You’re looking more and more like your brother Tyler.”
“Ma, I am Tyler.” Then he said it again, hoping it would sink in.
She laughed, a phlegmy, unrestrained sound that ended as abruptly as it started.
“You were always a prankster, weren’t you?” she said.
He sighed. “Yeah, ma. You know me.”
The springs poked me through the mattress. I tried moving around to get comfortable, but it was no use. I listened to the sounds below. A faucet running. A cabinet door banging shut. The coffee maker hissing and gurgling. Then I heard a thunk, the sound of something with a little weight hitting the bottom of a trash can.
“What’re you doing with my shoes?” Mrs. Stinton squawked.
“Ma, you can’t wear those no more. They’re dangerous.”
“But they’re pretty,” she said.
“It don’t matter,” he said. “You break a hip; I can’t afford the surgery. So, you wear your flats. Flats or sneakers. I don’t want to see no more heels.”
The tension started in my jaw, then moved down to my throat before spreading across my neck as I thought about what could be down there with Angie’s shoes—coffee grounds, banana peels, tipped over bottles of Ensure. I waited maybe fifteen minutes after Tyler had gone to work before putting my feet to the floor. Thin, wrecked carpet covered the stairs, and when I stepped too close to where the tread butted against the riser, I felt the bite of the tack. I walked quietly for Mrs. Stinton had fallen back asleep, her mouth gaped, drool running down the side of her cheek and onto her whiskery chin. Light floated through the blinds and hung in the air, lackluster and somewhat gray. I adjusted the Eagles blanket to cover her foot.
I walked into the kitchen, feeling gouges in the vinyl floor through the hole in my sock. The trashcan was next to the counter. I looked down and saw the heels lying on a half-eaten slice of pizza and a blue pamphlet about salvation. I reached into the garbage and lifted the heels. I turned them left, then right. They were unstained, undamaged. Relief swept over me. I set the heels on the chipped, off-white counter. I leaned my elbows onto the counter and gazed out the window, past the alley and garbage bins, at the birdfeeder in my neighbor’s backyard. A squirrel hung upside down from a snowy limb, pilfering seed. I watched him for a while, then looked down at the “World’s Greatest Dipshit” mug resting in the sink. It was the last gift Tyler’s brother Mark had given him before catching five years on a vehicular manslaughter charge. Tyler drank from it every morning before beginning his shift at the auto parts store. I looked at the pot; there was still enough coffee left for a cup. I opened the cabinet and pulled out a Christmas-themed mug. I poured a cup and watched the snow fall.
I didn’t watch for long, anxious Mrs. Stinton would wake and start in about the heels. I carried the heels by their straps, my mug in the other hand, the stairs groaning and creaking as I crept up them. I entered my room and set my mug on the dresser so I could open the bottom drawer. I picked up a stack of shirts on the righthand side, revealing a blonde wig, the face cast Angie had made, and the gold silk blouse. I placed the shoes next to the other items, then stacked the shirts on top. I pushed the drawer in with my foot.
That thing I did with Mrs. Stinton yesterday, I said I wouldn’t no more, but how do you stop yourself? I missed her too much, my Angie. Sometimes it wasn’t enough to talk to her; I needed to see her, too. Mrs. Stinton was easy because she forgot. She forgot the wig and the mask, the blouse and the heels. She forgot holding hands with me and sitting on the loveseat. She forgot when I called her Angie and she called me Eddie. I preferred the last girl over Mrs. Stinton, but she was no longer an option.
The last girl’s name was Leah, a junkie I’d been watching pander up and down the street for weeks. When she was in a fix for money, she’d wear the short skirt and platform shoes, a tube top that showed the bones in her chest, with an unzipped coat over top to keep her from freezing. Other times, she’d have on dirty jeans and an old pair of Vans. She wasn’t much more than a kid, her skin still producing acne that she tried to conceal. She had these scabs on her hands and arms that she picked at. It was early spring, the first nice day of the year, when she had approached me. I was sitting on the front step, smoking a cigarette. It was just after lunch, so Tyler wasn’t home. The long sleeve shirt I wore was stained with decomposed leaf sludge, but either she didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Can I get one?” she asked, nodding at the pack beside me.
I picked it up and shook one out. She grabbed it. Her nails were bitten, the pink polish mostly chipped. She leaned forward so I could light her cigarette.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She puffed out smoke, hesitated for a moment. “Leah.” She had an itchy look about her and kept glancing over her shoulder.
“Is someone following you?”
“Jesus,” she said. “He follows me closely.”
I laughed. Then she laughed, but it was a noise saddled with apathy.
“You live here?” she asked.
“Unfortunately,” I said.
“Well, maybe you’re fortunate today.” She sucked on her cigarette.
“Why’s that?” I looked off to my right. Across the railroad tracks a community of identical houses was going up fast, and beyond that a factory expelled dark gray smoke from a smokestack.
“Because you’ve found good company.”
“I have, have I? Is that on your resume, good company?” I looked at where the hem of her miniskirt fell mid-thigh. If she was a drumstick, you’d put her back in the bucket. I thought it must be hard walking around and standing on those little things all day. “Why don’t you sit, finish your smoke?”
She sat next to me on the step but left enough room so our hips weren’t touching. She kept her white clutch on the other side of her. “You never told me your name,” she said.
“Eddie,” I said.
“What do you think they make in that factory?” She watched the plume mingle with the lighter clouds above it.
“It’s a Playtex factory.”
She laughed, a real one this time that had her body shaking, the nub of her cigarette bouncing between her fingers.
“What’s so funny?”
“They’ve got to make all that smoke for a fucking tampon?” She laughed some more.
I joined her, dropping my cigarette in the process. It fell to the ground, in the part of the yard that ought to be a flowerbed but was just dirt and grass. I leaned over to reach it but my arms weren’t quite long enough, so I let it burn out. She offered me the last drag off hers.
“You want to go inside?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
I stood, then she stood. She followed me inside.
“You’ve got to pull hard on that door to close it. Someone tried to break in a few months ago and it’s been fucked up ever since.”
“They should’ve just busted the window,” she said.
Inside my room, she left the door cracked the slightest amount. She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her shoes. I stood by the dresser, looking at the dried husk of a beetle. It had been on the carpet for more than a month, and I hadn’t vacuumed it. We didn’t have a vacuum in the house, but that was a poor excuse. I had a small shop vac in my van I sometimes used for work.
“You know, I don’t work pro bono—just putting it out there. It’s sixty for a blowjob, a hundred if you want more.” She started to remove her shirt, but I put my hand on her wrist to stop her.
“What?” she said. “You don’t got the money, do you?”
“I’ve got the money.”
“Then what’s the problem?” She blinked. There was mascara clumped in her lashes.
I was ashamed to ask her.
“C’mon, what is it?” she probed.
“I want you to wear something.”
She glanced at the beetle and laid her hand on my thigh. “You think you’re the first to ask me to dress up? This one guy has me dress like a nurse, but not the Halloween sexy kind, the boring kind in scrubs. And this other guy keeps this anime costume, has me put it on and calls me Hinata, whoever the fuck that is.” She started removing her shirt again. Her small breasts didn’t fill the cups of her bra. You could count her ribs, and she had a dime-sized mole halfway between her bra and belly button.
“You can leave the rest on.” I opened the bottom drawer and pushed the stack of shirts to the side. I handed her the blouse first. “Here.”
She pulled the gold blouse over her head. She rotated to offer her back, lifting her auburn hair with one hand to expose her neck. “Button it for me.”
I fumbled pushing the button through the small loop but got it after a few attempts. She let her hair fall back over the blouse, fanning a stale, earthy smell my direction. She pointed to the wig. “You like blondes, huh? I guess you want me to put that on. And the heels.” She smirked, but she hadn’t yet seen the mask in the drawer.
She leaned forward and put on the heels. Her feet were tiny, lost in Angie’s size eights. I adjusted the straps, pulling them as tight as they would go. I handed her the wig.
“Your mattress sucks,” she said, adjusting the wig. She couldn’t see her own hair sticking out the side. I tucked it under and repositioned the wig so none of her natural hair showed. She stood, put a hand on her hip and struck a sassy pose. “You got me dressing like an old flame?” she teased.
“There’s one more thing.” I smiled sheepishly.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s have it.”
With my back to her, I bent down, using both hands to carefully lift the mask from the drawer. I held it before her, offering it like a sacrament. She stared at it. I began to fidget.
“I need to see the money first.”
“Right.” I pivoted, gently placing Angie on top of the dresser. I pulled three twenties from my back pocket.
“I can’t blow you wearing a mask.”
“I don’t want you to blow me.”
“Then it’s more,” she said.
I reached into my pocket and removed the rest of my cash, thirty-four dollars in a collection of tens, fives, and ones.
“It’s all I got,” I said.
She looked at it. Our free spirited, lighthearted time was over. The full heart had been exposed, bloated with disappointment and dismembered hope.
“I don’t want sex,” I said.
She regarded me with skepticism. She took the money, shoved it in her clutch and snapped the clasp.
“What do you want, then?”
“To sit with me.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” I lifted the mask from the dresser. I handed it to her. “You have to be careful with it.”
“How do I put it on?”
There wasn’t a strap to hold it in place. It was a mold Angie had made of herself using alginate. She was an artist. A real artist. She had won a small fellowship for some large abstract paintings in the early 2000s and had exhibitions infrequently at local galleries and museums. She was going to take the mold, cut it up, and glue the pieces to canvas in her version of a self-portrait, but then the cancer took root and she never got around to it.
“Maybe we have to tuck the edge under the wig or something to keep it in place.” I pulled the wig back an inch or two to reveal her natural hairline. She held the mask in her lap. “You can put it up to your face now.”
She held it to her face. I pulled the wig down so that the elastic secured the edge of the mask. Angie’s face was slightly triangular, broader at the forehead and narrowing at the chin. She had a perfect Greek nose. Her cheekbones were high without being severe. The mask was out of context on Leah, this sliver of a woman who didn’t possess Angie’s fullness. Nevertheless, I was happy to see her again. And behind the mask, Leah’s eyes presented like Angie’s—brown, even had the flecks of gold in them. For a second, I forgot where I was. For a second, I had worm-holed to a time before the illness, the bills, the bankruptcy. Back when I had everything.
“Are you okay?” The mask inhibited her mouth from moving freely, slurring her words.
“Yes.” I reached for her hand.
We’d meet like this once a week, on days I’d finish a job early and Tyler was still at work. Spring had sprung, the warmer weather causing trash collecting in the alley to spoil faster. Waiting for her on the stoop, the breeze wafted sharp, pungent odors. And as the days elapsed, the weather progressing from warm to hot, her appearance began to spoil as well. I doubted she tipped the scales at a hundred fully clothed. Her cheeks were sunken and her hair hung in oily clumps. She stopped concealing her acne with makeup. But when she added the wig and mask, I could forget her decline. We sat side by side on the bed, like usual, often holding hands. We had adjusted to this new vulnerability and began having real conversations.
“I never asked you what you did. For work, I mean. I see you got that van and those ladders.”
“I clean gutters. Sometimes I power wash houses. I used to have a gutter installation business. Had four guys working for me one time. I was making good money.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“My wife got sick. I struggled keeping the business afloat and taking her to appointments. The medical bills piled up. I had to file for bankruptcy. Burned my credit with all my vendors.”
She touched the mask tentatively, then let her fingers trail down her neck. “So that’s who I am? Your wife?”
“No,” I said. I looked at the beetle—the same fucking beetle—on the carpet. I was disgusted. “You’re you. And I’m me.”
“You’re not very good at pretending,” she said.
“I never was.”
Leah gave my hand a little squeeze. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see her.
The hoarse beckoning of Mrs. Stinton startled me. What I couldn’t figure was why she was using my actual name and not calling me Mark or Tyler or her dead husband Willie. “Eddie,” she called again.
“Yeah, Mrs. Stinton. Coming.” I descended the stairs, running my hand against the wall where a handrail used to be. The cogs, aligned correctly in her head for once, had me feeling shaky. When my feet hit the living room carpet, I looked at her. The drool was gone from her chin and her green eyes sparkled with an odd clarity. She was holding the remote and staring at the television’s blue screen. I stepped closer to her.
“What’s going on?”
“This remote isn’t working. I press the buttons, but all I get is this damn screen.”
“Let me see it,” I said.
She handed it over for inspection. I pressed some buttons. They lit up. I pressed the auxiliary button, but the screen didn’t change. Wouldn’t be the first time Tyler forgot to pay the cable bill.
I handed the remote back to her. “I don’t know. I think I’ll have to talk to Tyler about this. This is something he’s going to have to fix.”
“He didn’t pay the bill, did he?” A sneer wrinkled her lips.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Stinton. I’ll talk to him when he gets home from work.”
She scowled, the furrows running parallel to her mouth deepening. “Damn it. Now I won’t get to see the guy who does the paternity tests.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s probably a rerun, anyway.”
“Eddie,” she said, peering up at me.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen my blonde wig? Maybe we ought to play that little game again.”
I blinked rapidly; my tongue was cement. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Stinton.”
She laughed and swatted my leg playfully. “You ain’t fooling me. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She laughed some more. What could I do but give her a tight-lipped smile and time to forget? I grabbed my coat that was slung across the newel post.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked, her voice pitched.
“Just out for a bit.” I slid my shoes on by the door. “Don’t go nowhere, okay?”
“That’s what you boys are always telling me. Guess I’ll just have to find a way to entertain myself.”
I shut the door behind me. I stood on the stoop, staring at where the shoveling stopped on the sidewalk. Maybe a half-inch of snow had refilled the void, but the flakes were falling sparsely now. I slid the keys from my coat pocket. I unlocked the van and sat down, the chill of the seat absorbed through my jeans. I cranked the ignition a couple times before it started. I let the engine idle a few minutes, listening to some doo-wop station compete against the static.
I circled the block, scanning the junkies. Snow, rain, sleet—they didn’t give a shit what Mother Nature tossed their way. They were their own force, twitching and shuffling about with their runny noses and ratty clothing. I saw five or six of the usuals, but I didn’t see Leah. Ahead, I saw a guy she used to associate with sitting on a shopping cart turned on its side. I slowed to a crawl, about to roll the window down when I realized it wasn’t him. I fishtailed when I hit the gas, forgetting what was beneath my tires.
Shit, it was useless. After all, how many weeks had I sat on the stoop, waiting for her to reappear? How many times had I looped this block, searching the sad, broken people? She was gone. Gone, gone—like my Angie. You can feel it with people, when life’s leaking out of them. And you could see Leah had no intention of replacing the plug. The growing number of track marks, the collapsed veins—she welcomed the drain. She was going down it. Fuck you, life, and your intolerance to mercy. What I didn’t get was why I was still hanging around? If she could do it, why couldn’t I?
I made a left on Tatnall, then another left that took me back to Division Street. I passed a dilapidated self-storage facility and a hair braiding studio run out of a doublewide. I kept going, past the small used car lot, past the railroad tracks, the smoke billowing from the Playtex factory planting a darker gray against a sky the color of an oyster shell. I made a right into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant. Dolce Vita the sign read in big green letters pitted against stucco. Me and Angie used to come here, back when it was something else. Back when it was a karaoke bar that served mediocre Mexican. On Friday nights, they’d move tables to make room for a dance floor. We’d start our night with margaritas and end with a bucket of Coronas to avoid the hangover the next morning. The karaoke host would play one of those popular line dance songs every so often to give our ears a break from off-key singing. Angie would drag me out there, but she could never make a dancer out of me. I’d be cha-cha’ing to the left when I was supposed to be sliding to the right, bumping her, throwing her off rhythm, stepping on the toes of anyone who dared get near me. She said I moved like a wooden puppet with rickety joints, and I’d joke about a stiff one she could help me with. What times we had! Laughing and stumbling into our apartment, making love with the windows open as the breeze licked our bodies.
Seeing our old haunts turned over was dismantling. How could I reconstruct the past when the set was constantly changing? Her death had made me a vagabond as I carried her around, trying to find the familiar again. I sat there, staring through the window of the empty restaurant at white linen tablecloths stretched over tables that used to have hand-painted motifs of cacti, donkeys, and sombreros. I sat there, staring, until a snowplow came to take care of the parking lot.
I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Stinton, but the bars wouldn’t open for another hour. Maybe in that head of hers, the shaft had broken or the cog had dislodged, and what happened yesterday was a pile of rubble. Or maybe it wasn’t. Let’s say the cat slipped out of the bag and she tattled to Tyler—would he believe her? How could he? She cooked socks in the oven and shoveled snow in high heels.
I turned left on our street. I didn’t see it at first, with the powerlines drooping and the elm tree overhanging the sidewalk, but once past those obstacles I could see a rolling mass of smoke pouring from our house. And then I could smell it. Ah, Jesus, look what she’d done. I slammed the van into park and jumped out. Our neighbor stood on her front porch wearing a shower cap and a pink terrycloth robe.
“Call 911,” I shouted.
“Already did,” she said.
I ran across my neighbor’s yard, slipping and scuttling in the snow. The doors and windows, from where I could see, were closed. Through a side window, flame flashed through black smoke. I climbed the stoop and turned the doorknob. Locked. I banged on the door, then felt my pocket. I’d left the fucking keys in the ignition. I ran back to my truck, catching myself in the shin with the corner of the driver’s side door as I yanked it open. I ran back to the house, shoved the key into the cylinder. The door had gotten warmer in the time I’d spent dicking around to get a key. I entered to a wall of heat and smoke. My eyes were a stinging, watery mess.
“Mrs. Stinton!” I shouted. “Mrs. Stinton!”
I pulled my shirt over my nose and squinted. I got on all fours, burrowing further into the smoke. Toward the back of the house, near the kitchen, timber crackled. A window shattered and something collapsed. I bumped along close to the ground, hitting the recliner and end table, but she wasn’t there. Had she passed out in the kitchen? Her room? I yelled her name once more before finding the stairs, choking and coughing as I clambered up them. Tears blurred my vision, but I could see slightly better in my room. I opened the bottom drawer and grabbed the blouse, the wig, the shoes. And most importantly, the mask. I scampered down the stairs, carrying the items tucked in the crook of my arm, running through the smoke and insufferable heat, straight into the recliner. I flipped over it, Angie’s belongings scattering. Gasping and hacking, I felt around on the floor, collecting them one by one. I got to my feet and bolted out the door.
I could’ve tried again for Mrs. Stinton, but I sat in my van, cradling Angie, gazing down at her synthetic beauty as the sirens drew near.
“Ma, what’re you doing?” Tyler asked.
She plowed her shovel through the powder, wobbling as she tossed the snow. She had me sweating, worrying she’d break Angie’s heel. Tyler descended the steps—slipping and regaining his balance on the last one—and took the shovel.
“Give me back my shovel,” she said.
“You wear boots when you shovel, ma. Boots. And what the hell are you doing out here? It’s Christ—what time is it?” Tyler glanced across the street at a neighbor’s truck warming up, exhaust billowing from the tailpipe. He looked back at his mom. “The sun ain’t even up, and you’re out here in heels trying to break a hip.”
A lump formed in my chest. Would he start asking questions? Where she got them, et cetera? But he didn’t. He only stared at them sadly, shaking his head. “Christ almighty, what did I do to deserve this?”
A fog settled over her face, and I thought that’s it, Mrs. Stinton, do what you do best—forget. Forget your son. Forget yesterday. Forget everything. She knit her brows, the simple act reminding her that she had left her anger somewhere. “Give that back to me!”
“Ma, quit yelling. You’ll wake the neighborhood.” Tyler switched the shovel to the opposite hand so she couldn’t get at it. With his other hand, he steered her toward the apartment.
“What about the snow?” she asked, glancing back at the sidewalk.
“You ain’t got to worry about the snow. I’ll take care of it.” He propped the shovel against the siding and gripped her forearm to steady her as she took the steps. They entered the house, disappearing from view, but I could still hear them downstairs.
“Yeah, you always say that,” she said, “but you don’t take care of nothing.”
I closed my window, but softly so the sound wouldn’t register. I felt for Tyler. If only Mrs. Stinton realized how much work she was, but she couldn't. Just last week she almost burnt the place down putting socks in the oven. And the week before she put tinfoil in the microwave. The goddamn smoke detector didn’t work but, somehow, the ancient fire extinguisher did.
I took two steps, and I was back on my mattress. Two steps got you anywhere in this room—the window, the dresser, the door. That was the size of my life now, a postage stamp. I was renting a room; a room I had found on Craigslist. Tyler had been looking for someone he could split the rent with. The bigger bedroom downstairs was Tyler’s since he was here first, but he relinquished it to his mom when he moved her in. He now occupied the living room, his stuff pushed up against the wall—Milligan Auto Parts shirts, gray workpants, socks, underwear, a skateboard I’d never seen in motion. He kept it all pushed up against the wall so his mom wouldn’t trip. He slept in the recliner most nights because it was more comfortable than having his legs dangle over the edge of the loveseat. But during the day, that’s where she camped out, on the recliner. Gave her the best view of the television. She’d sit there all day, watching reruns of court TV and trashy talk shows, forgetting to eat, drink, and use the bathroom.
As I pulled the blanket to my chin, I heard the recliner spring back. Tyler probably had Angie’s heels off by now, massaging his mom’s feet, trying to circulate the purple out of them. What the hell was I thinking leaving Angie’s shoes down there? I wasn’t, that’s the problem. Death was a spider getting fat on those left behind. It’d suck out every last bit of brain jelly and leave you nothing but a heart. That was me, all heart and not a goddamn braincell in sight. I was busy lamenting my condition when I heard Mrs. Stinton say, “You’re looking more and more like your brother Tyler.”
“Ma, I am Tyler.” Then he said it again, hoping it would sink in.
She laughed, a phlegmy, unrestrained sound that ended as abruptly as it started.
“You were always a prankster, weren’t you?” she said.
He sighed. “Yeah, ma. You know me.”
The springs poked me through the mattress. I tried moving around to get comfortable, but it was no use. I listened to the sounds below. A faucet running. A cabinet door banging shut. The coffee maker hissing and gurgling. Then I heard a thunk, the sound of something with a little weight hitting the bottom of a trash can.
“What’re you doing with my shoes?” Mrs. Stinton squawked.
“Ma, you can’t wear those no more. They’re dangerous.”
“But they’re pretty,” she said.
“It don’t matter,” he said. “You break a hip; I can’t afford the surgery. So, you wear your flats. Flats or sneakers. I don’t want to see no more heels.”
The tension started in my jaw, then moved down to my throat before spreading across my neck as I thought about what could be down there with Angie’s shoes—coffee grounds, banana peels, tipped over bottles of Ensure. I waited maybe fifteen minutes after Tyler had gone to work before putting my feet to the floor. Thin, wrecked carpet covered the stairs, and when I stepped too close to where the tread butted against the riser, I felt the bite of the tack. I walked quietly for Mrs. Stinton had fallen back asleep, her mouth gaped, drool running down the side of her cheek and onto her whiskery chin. Light floated through the blinds and hung in the air, lackluster and somewhat gray. I adjusted the Eagles blanket to cover her foot.
I walked into the kitchen, feeling gouges in the vinyl floor through the hole in my sock. The trashcan was next to the counter. I looked down and saw the heels lying on a half-eaten slice of pizza and a blue pamphlet about salvation. I reached into the garbage and lifted the heels. I turned them left, then right. They were unstained, undamaged. Relief swept over me. I set the heels on the chipped, off-white counter. I leaned my elbows onto the counter and gazed out the window, past the alley and garbage bins, at the birdfeeder in my neighbor’s backyard. A squirrel hung upside down from a snowy limb, pilfering seed. I watched him for a while, then looked down at the “World’s Greatest Dipshit” mug resting in the sink. It was the last gift Tyler’s brother Mark had given him before catching five years on a vehicular manslaughter charge. Tyler drank from it every morning before beginning his shift at the auto parts store. I looked at the pot; there was still enough coffee left for a cup. I opened the cabinet and pulled out a Christmas-themed mug. I poured a cup and watched the snow fall.
I didn’t watch for long, anxious Mrs. Stinton would wake and start in about the heels. I carried the heels by their straps, my mug in the other hand, the stairs groaning and creaking as I crept up them. I entered my room and set my mug on the dresser so I could open the bottom drawer. I picked up a stack of shirts on the righthand side, revealing a blonde wig, the face cast Angie had made, and the gold silk blouse. I placed the shoes next to the other items, then stacked the shirts on top. I pushed the drawer in with my foot.
That thing I did with Mrs. Stinton yesterday, I said I wouldn’t no more, but how do you stop yourself? I missed her too much, my Angie. Sometimes it wasn’t enough to talk to her; I needed to see her, too. Mrs. Stinton was easy because she forgot. She forgot the wig and the mask, the blouse and the heels. She forgot holding hands with me and sitting on the loveseat. She forgot when I called her Angie and she called me Eddie. I preferred the last girl over Mrs. Stinton, but she was no longer an option.
The last girl’s name was Leah, a junkie I’d been watching pander up and down the street for weeks. When she was in a fix for money, she’d wear the short skirt and platform shoes, a tube top that showed the bones in her chest, with an unzipped coat over top to keep her from freezing. Other times, she’d have on dirty jeans and an old pair of Vans. She wasn’t much more than a kid, her skin still producing acne that she tried to conceal. She had these scabs on her hands and arms that she picked at. It was early spring, the first nice day of the year, when she had approached me. I was sitting on the front step, smoking a cigarette. It was just after lunch, so Tyler wasn’t home. The long sleeve shirt I wore was stained with decomposed leaf sludge, but either she didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Can I get one?” she asked, nodding at the pack beside me.
I picked it up and shook one out. She grabbed it. Her nails were bitten, the pink polish mostly chipped. She leaned forward so I could light her cigarette.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She puffed out smoke, hesitated for a moment. “Leah.” She had an itchy look about her and kept glancing over her shoulder.
“Is someone following you?”
“Jesus,” she said. “He follows me closely.”
I laughed. Then she laughed, but it was a noise saddled with apathy.
“You live here?” she asked.
“Unfortunately,” I said.
“Well, maybe you’re fortunate today.” She sucked on her cigarette.
“Why’s that?” I looked off to my right. Across the railroad tracks a community of identical houses was going up fast, and beyond that a factory expelled dark gray smoke from a smokestack.
“Because you’ve found good company.”
“I have, have I? Is that on your resume, good company?” I looked at where the hem of her miniskirt fell mid-thigh. If she was a drumstick, you’d put her back in the bucket. I thought it must be hard walking around and standing on those little things all day. “Why don’t you sit, finish your smoke?”
She sat next to me on the step but left enough room so our hips weren’t touching. She kept her white clutch on the other side of her. “You never told me your name,” she said.
“Eddie,” I said.
“What do you think they make in that factory?” She watched the plume mingle with the lighter clouds above it.
“It’s a Playtex factory.”
She laughed, a real one this time that had her body shaking, the nub of her cigarette bouncing between her fingers.
“What’s so funny?”
“They’ve got to make all that smoke for a fucking tampon?” She laughed some more.
I joined her, dropping my cigarette in the process. It fell to the ground, in the part of the yard that ought to be a flowerbed but was just dirt and grass. I leaned over to reach it but my arms weren’t quite long enough, so I let it burn out. She offered me the last drag off hers.
“You want to go inside?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
I stood, then she stood. She followed me inside.
“You’ve got to pull hard on that door to close it. Someone tried to break in a few months ago and it’s been fucked up ever since.”
“They should’ve just busted the window,” she said.
Inside my room, she left the door cracked the slightest amount. She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her shoes. I stood by the dresser, looking at the dried husk of a beetle. It had been on the carpet for more than a month, and I hadn’t vacuumed it. We didn’t have a vacuum in the house, but that was a poor excuse. I had a small shop vac in my van I sometimes used for work.
“You know, I don’t work pro bono—just putting it out there. It’s sixty for a blowjob, a hundred if you want more.” She started to remove her shirt, but I put my hand on her wrist to stop her.
“What?” she said. “You don’t got the money, do you?”
“I’ve got the money.”
“Then what’s the problem?” She blinked. There was mascara clumped in her lashes.
I was ashamed to ask her.
“C’mon, what is it?” she probed.
“I want you to wear something.”
She glanced at the beetle and laid her hand on my thigh. “You think you’re the first to ask me to dress up? This one guy has me dress like a nurse, but not the Halloween sexy kind, the boring kind in scrubs. And this other guy keeps this anime costume, has me put it on and calls me Hinata, whoever the fuck that is.” She started removing her shirt again. Her small breasts didn’t fill the cups of her bra. You could count her ribs, and she had a dime-sized mole halfway between her bra and belly button.
“You can leave the rest on.” I opened the bottom drawer and pushed the stack of shirts to the side. I handed her the blouse first. “Here.”
She pulled the gold blouse over her head. She rotated to offer her back, lifting her auburn hair with one hand to expose her neck. “Button it for me.”
I fumbled pushing the button through the small loop but got it after a few attempts. She let her hair fall back over the blouse, fanning a stale, earthy smell my direction. She pointed to the wig. “You like blondes, huh? I guess you want me to put that on. And the heels.” She smirked, but she hadn’t yet seen the mask in the drawer.
She leaned forward and put on the heels. Her feet were tiny, lost in Angie’s size eights. I adjusted the straps, pulling them as tight as they would go. I handed her the wig.
“Your mattress sucks,” she said, adjusting the wig. She couldn’t see her own hair sticking out the side. I tucked it under and repositioned the wig so none of her natural hair showed. She stood, put a hand on her hip and struck a sassy pose. “You got me dressing like an old flame?” she teased.
“There’s one more thing.” I smiled sheepishly.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s have it.”
With my back to her, I bent down, using both hands to carefully lift the mask from the drawer. I held it before her, offering it like a sacrament. She stared at it. I began to fidget.
“I need to see the money first.”
“Right.” I pivoted, gently placing Angie on top of the dresser. I pulled three twenties from my back pocket.
“I can’t blow you wearing a mask.”
“I don’t want you to blow me.”
“Then it’s more,” she said.
I reached into my pocket and removed the rest of my cash, thirty-four dollars in a collection of tens, fives, and ones.
“It’s all I got,” I said.
She looked at it. Our free spirited, lighthearted time was over. The full heart had been exposed, bloated with disappointment and dismembered hope.
“I don’t want sex,” I said.
She regarded me with skepticism. She took the money, shoved it in her clutch and snapped the clasp.
“What do you want, then?”
“To sit with me.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” I lifted the mask from the dresser. I handed it to her. “You have to be careful with it.”
“How do I put it on?”
There wasn’t a strap to hold it in place. It was a mold Angie had made of herself using alginate. She was an artist. A real artist. She had won a small fellowship for some large abstract paintings in the early 2000s and had exhibitions infrequently at local galleries and museums. She was going to take the mold, cut it up, and glue the pieces to canvas in her version of a self-portrait, but then the cancer took root and she never got around to it.
“Maybe we have to tuck the edge under the wig or something to keep it in place.” I pulled the wig back an inch or two to reveal her natural hairline. She held the mask in her lap. “You can put it up to your face now.”
She held it to her face. I pulled the wig down so that the elastic secured the edge of the mask. Angie’s face was slightly triangular, broader at the forehead and narrowing at the chin. She had a perfect Greek nose. Her cheekbones were high without being severe. The mask was out of context on Leah, this sliver of a woman who didn’t possess Angie’s fullness. Nevertheless, I was happy to see her again. And behind the mask, Leah’s eyes presented like Angie’s—brown, even had the flecks of gold in them. For a second, I forgot where I was. For a second, I had worm-holed to a time before the illness, the bills, the bankruptcy. Back when I had everything.
“Are you okay?” The mask inhibited her mouth from moving freely, slurring her words.
“Yes.” I reached for her hand.
We’d meet like this once a week, on days I’d finish a job early and Tyler was still at work. Spring had sprung, the warmer weather causing trash collecting in the alley to spoil faster. Waiting for her on the stoop, the breeze wafted sharp, pungent odors. And as the days elapsed, the weather progressing from warm to hot, her appearance began to spoil as well. I doubted she tipped the scales at a hundred fully clothed. Her cheeks were sunken and her hair hung in oily clumps. She stopped concealing her acne with makeup. But when she added the wig and mask, I could forget her decline. We sat side by side on the bed, like usual, often holding hands. We had adjusted to this new vulnerability and began having real conversations.
“I never asked you what you did. For work, I mean. I see you got that van and those ladders.”
“I clean gutters. Sometimes I power wash houses. I used to have a gutter installation business. Had four guys working for me one time. I was making good money.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“My wife got sick. I struggled keeping the business afloat and taking her to appointments. The medical bills piled up. I had to file for bankruptcy. Burned my credit with all my vendors.”
She touched the mask tentatively, then let her fingers trail down her neck. “So that’s who I am? Your wife?”
“No,” I said. I looked at the beetle—the same fucking beetle—on the carpet. I was disgusted. “You’re you. And I’m me.”
“You’re not very good at pretending,” she said.
“I never was.”
Leah gave my hand a little squeeze. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see her.
The hoarse beckoning of Mrs. Stinton startled me. What I couldn’t figure was why she was using my actual name and not calling me Mark or Tyler or her dead husband Willie. “Eddie,” she called again.
“Yeah, Mrs. Stinton. Coming.” I descended the stairs, running my hand against the wall where a handrail used to be. The cogs, aligned correctly in her head for once, had me feeling shaky. When my feet hit the living room carpet, I looked at her. The drool was gone from her chin and her green eyes sparkled with an odd clarity. She was holding the remote and staring at the television’s blue screen. I stepped closer to her.
“What’s going on?”
“This remote isn’t working. I press the buttons, but all I get is this damn screen.”
“Let me see it,” I said.
She handed it over for inspection. I pressed some buttons. They lit up. I pressed the auxiliary button, but the screen didn’t change. Wouldn’t be the first time Tyler forgot to pay the cable bill.
I handed the remote back to her. “I don’t know. I think I’ll have to talk to Tyler about this. This is something he’s going to have to fix.”
“He didn’t pay the bill, did he?” A sneer wrinkled her lips.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Stinton. I’ll talk to him when he gets home from work.”
She scowled, the furrows running parallel to her mouth deepening. “Damn it. Now I won’t get to see the guy who does the paternity tests.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s probably a rerun, anyway.”
“Eddie,” she said, peering up at me.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen my blonde wig? Maybe we ought to play that little game again.”
I blinked rapidly; my tongue was cement. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Stinton.”
She laughed and swatted my leg playfully. “You ain’t fooling me. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She laughed some more. What could I do but give her a tight-lipped smile and time to forget? I grabbed my coat that was slung across the newel post.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked, her voice pitched.
“Just out for a bit.” I slid my shoes on by the door. “Don’t go nowhere, okay?”
“That’s what you boys are always telling me. Guess I’ll just have to find a way to entertain myself.”
I shut the door behind me. I stood on the stoop, staring at where the shoveling stopped on the sidewalk. Maybe a half-inch of snow had refilled the void, but the flakes were falling sparsely now. I slid the keys from my coat pocket. I unlocked the van and sat down, the chill of the seat absorbed through my jeans. I cranked the ignition a couple times before it started. I let the engine idle a few minutes, listening to some doo-wop station compete against the static.
I circled the block, scanning the junkies. Snow, rain, sleet—they didn’t give a shit what Mother Nature tossed their way. They were their own force, twitching and shuffling about with their runny noses and ratty clothing. I saw five or six of the usuals, but I didn’t see Leah. Ahead, I saw a guy she used to associate with sitting on a shopping cart turned on its side. I slowed to a crawl, about to roll the window down when I realized it wasn’t him. I fishtailed when I hit the gas, forgetting what was beneath my tires.
Shit, it was useless. After all, how many weeks had I sat on the stoop, waiting for her to reappear? How many times had I looped this block, searching the sad, broken people? She was gone. Gone, gone—like my Angie. You can feel it with people, when life’s leaking out of them. And you could see Leah had no intention of replacing the plug. The growing number of track marks, the collapsed veins—she welcomed the drain. She was going down it. Fuck you, life, and your intolerance to mercy. What I didn’t get was why I was still hanging around? If she could do it, why couldn’t I?
I made a left on Tatnall, then another left that took me back to Division Street. I passed a dilapidated self-storage facility and a hair braiding studio run out of a doublewide. I kept going, past the small used car lot, past the railroad tracks, the smoke billowing from the Playtex factory planting a darker gray against a sky the color of an oyster shell. I made a right into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant. Dolce Vita the sign read in big green letters pitted against stucco. Me and Angie used to come here, back when it was something else. Back when it was a karaoke bar that served mediocre Mexican. On Friday nights, they’d move tables to make room for a dance floor. We’d start our night with margaritas and end with a bucket of Coronas to avoid the hangover the next morning. The karaoke host would play one of those popular line dance songs every so often to give our ears a break from off-key singing. Angie would drag me out there, but she could never make a dancer out of me. I’d be cha-cha’ing to the left when I was supposed to be sliding to the right, bumping her, throwing her off rhythm, stepping on the toes of anyone who dared get near me. She said I moved like a wooden puppet with rickety joints, and I’d joke about a stiff one she could help me with. What times we had! Laughing and stumbling into our apartment, making love with the windows open as the breeze licked our bodies.
Seeing our old haunts turned over was dismantling. How could I reconstruct the past when the set was constantly changing? Her death had made me a vagabond as I carried her around, trying to find the familiar again. I sat there, staring through the window of the empty restaurant at white linen tablecloths stretched over tables that used to have hand-painted motifs of cacti, donkeys, and sombreros. I sat there, staring, until a snowplow came to take care of the parking lot.
I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Stinton, but the bars wouldn’t open for another hour. Maybe in that head of hers, the shaft had broken or the cog had dislodged, and what happened yesterday was a pile of rubble. Or maybe it wasn’t. Let’s say the cat slipped out of the bag and she tattled to Tyler—would he believe her? How could he? She cooked socks in the oven and shoveled snow in high heels.
I turned left on our street. I didn’t see it at first, with the powerlines drooping and the elm tree overhanging the sidewalk, but once past those obstacles I could see a rolling mass of smoke pouring from our house. And then I could smell it. Ah, Jesus, look what she’d done. I slammed the van into park and jumped out. Our neighbor stood on her front porch wearing a shower cap and a pink terrycloth robe.
“Call 911,” I shouted.
“Already did,” she said.
I ran across my neighbor’s yard, slipping and scuttling in the snow. The doors and windows, from where I could see, were closed. Through a side window, flame flashed through black smoke. I climbed the stoop and turned the doorknob. Locked. I banged on the door, then felt my pocket. I’d left the fucking keys in the ignition. I ran back to my truck, catching myself in the shin with the corner of the driver’s side door as I yanked it open. I ran back to the house, shoved the key into the cylinder. The door had gotten warmer in the time I’d spent dicking around to get a key. I entered to a wall of heat and smoke. My eyes were a stinging, watery mess.
“Mrs. Stinton!” I shouted. “Mrs. Stinton!”
I pulled my shirt over my nose and squinted. I got on all fours, burrowing further into the smoke. Toward the back of the house, near the kitchen, timber crackled. A window shattered and something collapsed. I bumped along close to the ground, hitting the recliner and end table, but she wasn’t there. Had she passed out in the kitchen? Her room? I yelled her name once more before finding the stairs, choking and coughing as I clambered up them. Tears blurred my vision, but I could see slightly better in my room. I opened the bottom drawer and grabbed the blouse, the wig, the shoes. And most importantly, the mask. I scampered down the stairs, carrying the items tucked in the crook of my arm, running through the smoke and insufferable heat, straight into the recliner. I flipped over it, Angie’s belongings scattering. Gasping and hacking, I felt around on the floor, collecting them one by one. I got to my feet and bolted out the door.
I could’ve tried again for Mrs. Stinton, but I sat in my van, cradling Angie, gazing down at her synthetic beauty as the sirens drew near.
Don Foster grew up in a town without a stoplight. His fiction has appeared in Dark Yonder, Bull, Canyon Voices, and elsewhere. When he's not writing, he can be found watching his kids' soccer games with his wife.
Twitter: @donleefoster
Instagram: @dfoster7900
My website: www.donfosterwriter.com
Twitter: @donleefoster
Instagram: @dfoster7900
My website: www.donfosterwriter.com
