Chapter Eighteen
I couldn’t ask Dr. Kim what to do. Dr. Blankman might not have been right about everything, but he was right about that. I couldn’t risk her job and her family, not when she’d taken such good care of me. None of this was my fault, but none of it was hers either.
I couldn’t ask Alice because I refused to put her in the position of choosing me over her career. Also I didn’t need to because I knew what she’d say, but that didn’t mean she was right. Believe it or not, sometimes she wasn’t.
I couldn’t talk to Moth about it because he wasn’t thinking straight. It made sense why, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
I was afraid to go and afraid to not go. I was confused and cowed and shamed. And still a little nauseated.
Naturally, that was when the beast arrived.
It all started when Deanna called from downstairs to say there was someone at the front desk not on my approved-visitor list.
“Her name is Elsa Aliaga. You know her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She said she’s heard some incredible things about you which she had to see to believe, and I said, ‘You mean her car-washing skills? They’re for real. Pepper’s the OG car washer.’”
“OG?”
“Original gangster,” Deanna explained. Which explained nothing. “And she doesn’t believe me because, well, you know …”
“I’m an old lady.” That made sense, at least.
“So I said for a hundred bucks you would prove it.” Here Deanna dropped her voice to a whisper. Elsa Aliaga, whoever she was, must have been standing at the desk still. “If your car washes slap so hard random strangers are coming by, you could be making bank.”
I didn’t know what to say, mostly because I had only the vaguest sense of what was going on.
“Anyway, I can tell her to leave, or I can send her to the visitors’ lot, and you can work your magic.”
Now that she mentioned it, I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to do right then more than wash a car.
Looking back, what should have tipped me off was that Elsa Aliaga had paperwork from Enterprise on her passenger seat, and who washes their rental car? But what did I know? Maybe there was some kind of fee these days if you didn’t return them clean.
“Do you want to go get a coffee or an ice cream or something, and I’ll call you when it’s done?” I offered. Without Moth to help, the job would be meditative but slow.
“That’s okay.” Elsa Aliaga fluttered fingernails that were still decorated from Halloween (I assumed), the tips black and filed to points, the nail beds painted with green witch faces. “It’d be nice to chat. I’ve never had my car detailed by a … retiree. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
I started with the hose, careful to keep the spray away from her. “Just the one surprise,” I said. “And it’s not really that surprising.” I explained my theory about older women making good car washers. She was looking me up and down but did not seem to be listening.
“Full disclosure?” she said when I was done. “I’m from The Daily Beast.”
“Daily …?” I must have heard wrong.
“Beast, yes ma’am.”
So she had said “beast.” Maybe it had a new meaning, and “beast” no longer meant dragons like “viral” no longer meant flu. I’d have to ask Lola. “Are you … okay?”
“Me? I believe the word for what I am is ‘highly skeptical.’” Which was two words. “To be honest, I wouldn’t believe it, but we’re seeing it multiple places.”
“Seeing what?” I said. “The beast?”
“Well, that’s what I’d call it if I were you,” Elsa Aliaga laughed. “You must have been highly skeptical too. Can you describe your initial reaction?”
“Well, worried I suppose.” I added more soap to the bucket, mostly for something to do while I figured out what this woman was talking about. “And a little bit puzzled. I’m not always caught up with the latest terms.”
“I bet. A lot must have changed since last time you did this.”
“Have I done this before?”
“I guess that’s true.” She laughed again. “Even in ordinary cases, each time is like the first. Can I ask what your plans are?”
“I haven’t made any yet,” I confessed. “I suppose I’ll start by having my granddaughter explain what’s happened.”
Elsa Aliaga looked at me strangely. “Let me try again,” she said, and I understood the shift in tone if nothing else.
She spoke half as fast and twice as loud, as if I had lost my hearing midconversation, as if her being confusing was the same as my being stupid.
I set down the sponge. “What it boils down to, Ms. Mills, is this: Are you really a pregnant septuagenarian?”
I felt sucker punched, which is what we used to call it when someone hit you without warning. I felt like a sucker for sure. But my middle also felt cramped and tight, clenched and airless.
Maybe finally? Maybe now? Maybe it was leaving on its own, and we wouldn’t have to figure this mess out after all.
I left my supplies where they were—the sponge on the hood of her car, the hose coiled on the ground like the sort of scaled green beast I’d been picturing—and used my key card to access the garage entrance to the building, so I was inside and behind a locked door before Elsa Aliaga even realized I was leaving.
I could see her on the other side of it though, calling to me, banging on the glass, pressing her business card up against the window and gesticulating at it wildly.
When I got upstairs, heart hammering, stomach in revolt, I called the front desk. “Not a car-wash customer,” I panted to Deanna.
“Really? Who was she?”
I was still unclear on the answer to that question, and even if I knew it, I couldn’t warn her without raising harder questions still, and for sure I didn’t want to answer those.
But Deanna was no doubt used to slightly confused phone calls from residents.
Really, it must have been in her job description. So I thanked her and hung up.
My phone rang in my hand.
“Mom. It’s Max.” I recognized his voice. Plus he’d called my cell rather than my landline, so my phone displayed his name. Plus he was the only man in all the world who called me Mom. But I was grateful to him for clarifying anyway. “Don’t answer the phone,” he said.
“I already did.”
“Don’t answer the phone again. Listen, I’ve been getting pinged by trolls all morning.”
“Ahh.” So I’d been right, semantic shift, just like “troll” no longer meant monster under a bridge. “Now I understand.”
“You do?”
“Someone was just telling me about them.”
“About who?”
“Whom, Max.”
“About whom, Mom?”
“The trolls.”
Max was silent for a moment. “Someone was telling you about the internet trolls?”
“Well, not the trolls,” I said. “The beasts.”
“What beasts?”
“The daily beasts.”
Another beat. “Someone called you from The Daily Beast?”
“She didn’t call. She came in person to have her car washed. She was asking rude questions, though, so I left without rinsing.”
“Don’t move, Mom,” Max said. “And don’t answer the phone. I’m coming over.”
Before he could, though, Maisie and Dot arrived.
“We brought ice cream,” Maisie announced.
I didn’t mean to, but I looked at Dot, who looked away. She wasn’t eating much these days, not even ice cream. But she said, “That’s what you bring when your friend’s in a fight with her boyfriend.”
“We’re not in a fight, and he’s not my boyfriend. I’m not a teenager.” I felt myself blush. Like a teenager.
It was kind of them to come though, and it made me feel better—about Moth, about the beast, about Max sounding so worried and having to leave work in the middle of the day to come over and tend to me—but feeling better also made me feel worse.
My stomach settled. My middle felt less clenched. Nothing going after all.
Still, ice cream. Dot collapsed into a chair at the table, and Maisie unpacked six pints in a variety of flavors. I was getting spoons—no need for bowls—when the door flew open.
“What’s going on?” Max looked wildly around the room.
Maisie and Dot looked around too. Nothing was going on.
“We’re having ice cream,” I said. “Want a spoon?”
“Did anyone else call?”
“A few times.”
“Who?” Max’s eyes looked like they might pop out of his head and roll off to see what they could see on their own.
“I have no idea. You told me not to answer the phone.”
It rang again. Max leapt on it like a fox on a frog.
“Hello?” he choked, and then, “Who is this?” and then, “None of your goddamn business,” and then, “Go right ahead. I will sue the shit out of you,” and then, “Certainly, and then you can shove it up your ass,” and then, “Call again, and I’ll call the police,” and then, “You think not? You think they won’t care about you harassing little old ladies over the phone, lying about who you are and what you intend to do with any information you somehow coerce out of them?
” and then, “Over my dead body.” Then he said, “Asshole,” but since he’d already hung up at that point, it wasn’t clear to whom.
“Your son has a foul mouth,” Maisie admired.
“You’re not a little old lady.” Dot patted my hand.
“Thank you,” I said.
The door opened again. Darcy and Alice.
“You didn’t teach your children to knock?” Dot asked.
“Evidently it didn’t take.”
“Who leaked?” Alice demanded. “I am going to sue so many people.”
“For what, dear?”
“Violating your HIPAA protections, failure to protect doctor-patient confidentiality, contravening my right not to have my life and career fucked up by assholes. Take your pick.”
“All your children have foul mouths,” Maisie amended.
“What are we talking about?” I said.
“Who told the press you’re pregnant, Mom?” Darcy asked.
“The press?”
“The Daily Beast is an online newspaper,” Max sighed. “Sort of. It’s the modern-day equivalent of those magazines you never let me look at in line at the grocery store.”
“I mean it’s trashy,” Darcy sniffed, “but it’s not that trashy.”
“Once they run this story”—degree of trashiness was apparently not Max’s concern—“a thousand other outlets will follow up. This is going to get picked up by every news organization—and a bunch of other kinds of organizations—in the entire world.”
“Oh.” It was the quietest oh. “I’m sure that’s not true.” I tried to believe this.
“Trust me,” said Max. “I do this for a living.”
“You do?” said Darcy.
“What exactly?” said Alice.
“You know what I do!” Max sounded indignant. “Communications, press and publicity, social media branding—”
“I don’t need any of that.” I waved a hand and made myself laugh a little.
Surely Max was overstating it, I tried to suggest. Surely it was no big deal.
But what I was thinking was this: Dr. Blankman was right.
His predictions were coming true—journalists were not worrying about confidentiality, the kids’ lives were disrupted by my chaos—and if he was right about that, maybe he was right about the rest of it too.
But before I could confess to my come-alone visit to Dr. Blankman, my children went quiet and looked around at one another.
“Show her,” Darcy said.
“No,” said Alice.
“She’s going to find out eventually,” Darcy said.
“How,” said Alice.
“Fair. But show her anyway. At least she’ll understand what she’s about to be dealing with.”
“We,” said Alice.
“What?”
“What we are about to be dealing with.”
Max swiped at his phone and held it out to me.
I looked at the picture. I honestly did not believe it, but there it kept being, real as anything.
It was a photo of me, no question. In fact, I recognized it.
Vista View took a picture of new residents on move-in day in front of a backdrop of fake green hills and a genuine red bicycle.
(The bicycle was genuine only in theory.
Few of us would have been able to ride it even if it hadn’t been decorative.) I could just see the tip of the old-fashioned handlebars behind my left ear.
But my familiar face and head were atop a body which—just as certainly—was not mine.
The body below the head that was mine was very naked and very pregnant.
It had one arm positioned to hide its nipples (though not its breasts).
It had a belly taut and smooth and round as a balloon.
Not a balloon like from a fair, a balloon like one you ride underneath in a basket.
But underneath this balloon was the body’s other arm, hiding—if only barely—what everyone knew was there.
It wasn’t mine—none of it was mine—but there is was, attached to my head.
“That’s me,” I said.
“Well, half,” Darcy agreed.
“The miracle of technology,” Max said.
The scourge of technology. The curse of technology. The afflicting, menacing, evil plague of technology. “Who’s seen it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Everyone?”
I pushed my much less swollen, much less smooth, much-less-in-every-way body up from my chair and walked back to my bedroom without another word.
I wondered if it might feel good to slam the door, and it did.
I wondered if it might feel good to throw something, but I’d gotten rid of so much when I moved that everything left was unthrowable.
I thought instead I could fling myself onto the bed and have a long cry like the kids used to when they were furious teenagers.
Unfortunately, I was furious, but I was not a teenager.
Though nothing about the maneuver looked complex, I hit the mattress with insufficient will and too low a percentage of my lower body and bounced noisily onto the floor where my head met the bedpost with surprising vigor.
It felt like only a moment passed, but it must have been longer because when I opened my eyes, Moth was there. Darcy and Alice and Max, too, Maisie and Dot, but the face I saw first and last and most was Moth’s.
He put his lap under my head and stroked my hair, took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away blood.
“You’re here,” I said. I don’t know what I meant, but I sounded surprised, amazed even.
“Of course I’m here, Sarge. Maisie called me.”
“But you’re mad at me.”
“You’re mad at me,” he corrected. “And not really. And even if we were cross with each other, I’d still come when you needed me.”
I wished it were just the two of us and everyone else were gone. I was crying a little bit and trying not to. “I hurt,” I whispered.
“Me too.” He wiped tears off my cheeks. “I’m hurt and angry and powerless and overwhelmed.”
“Worse than that,” I said.
“I know.” Moth wiped and pressed. “It’s not too deep though. Bleeding’s slowing already. We’ll get some ointment and a plaster, and all will be well.”
“Worse than that.” I felt blood between my legs, a sensation I hadn’t felt in thirty years but remembered in my body like it was the wisdom of my ancestors.
The whole middle of me felt in rebellion again, a riot of cramping and pain and nausea, knowledge and terror, a burning reminder that I was no longer young and pretending I was was nothing but hubris.