Bill's Kitchen

2004-11-22T22:44:00.000-08:00

“Bill’s Kitchen”

Bill smokes cigarettes on the back porch, if you could call it that. A five by five foot slab of cement with two steps and an orange mesh lawn chair. She likes to sit out there in her underwear and watch the rattling trains through the wide slats in the fence until it gets too cold. She stamps her feet on the linoleum in the kitchen, running her fingers through her short and curly blond hair, until she feels warm again. She calls this her “Spirit Dance,” but her cats call it the “Food Dance.”

Jenny picks Bill up at seven thirty in her neon brown pickup truck, her eyes lashless and whiteblue, her “brown doe” hair, as Bill calls it. They listen to CCR as they drive into Chicago every morning. Jenny smokes out the window and Bill pretends she’s quit. They both detest it, feel it makes women vulgar, but sometimes you just feel vulgar.

“Did you know that CCR took Indians over to Alcatraz during the occupation in the late sixties?” Bill asks, opening her window a crack. The plastic bags fly around on the floor like cotton.

“What? Like in a boat?” Jenny’s lips twitch.

“Yeah. That’s cool, isn’t it?”

“Wicked,” says Jenny.

They walk inside the factory and clock in. They put on their scrubs, caps, latex gloves, swoosh into the assembly room, sterile, cool, and sweet-smelling. “Like face cream,” Bill says, tucking in her curls. Assembling pieces of plastic like little body parts, lined up and tender, waiting patiently in androgynous bliss.

Jenny’s hands slip over them in waves. They sigh into place and tumble past each other onto conveyer belts. Virginia stumbles in, covered in soft blue cloth with one wisp of hair hanging long and black down her back. Jenny stiffens, Bill gives a half-smile. “‘Lo,” Virginia says, already assembling.

“Hello,” answers Bill. Virginia makes fell uncomfortably pleased. She has bony, long hands and hard eyes, flashing, sweet, hard eyes. Bill moves closer to Jenny and taps her sneaker on Jenny’s toe.

Women move on in silence, the rustling of their sleeves like breathing. “Wh-” Bill’s voice cracks. “What’re you doing tonight?” Jenny opens her mouth with arched eyebrows.

“Oh, I’ve been knitting lately,” Virginia giggles loudly, tipping over miniature plastic bodies.

“D’ya want to come over to my house tonight? It’s just some girls over for dinner. Pot luck dinner.”

Face down, eyes up, flushed cheeks. “I’d love to,” she says strong hard sweet. Bill jumps a little, warm inside, Jenny icicles behind her. If they touched it would burn.

Virginia brushes her thick, wavy black hair into a strong blanket. She wraps sections around each other, the light catching blue and red. Pot stickers and lemonade from scratch. She imagines Bill’s lips with soft lipstick. She’d never seen her outside of the factory. She’d never seen her outside of her scrubs. Her sides tingle as she puts in beaded earrings.

“What the fuck was that?” asks Jenny.

“What?” Bill pleads ignorance and suddenly craves fried chicken. The dark city passes around them and behind them, moaning and breathing. Jenny hates her tears and loves the darkness that obscures them.

Bill cooks chicken in the broiler. The cats go nuts and the walls weep with the rich, moist heat. She hasn’t eaten broiled chicken since she was seven, but she tastes it when she sleeps during the summers.

She and her older brother Steve-o would go down to the American River on their bikes, dust rising around them in the Central Valley heat. Rattlesnakes, rattails left behind in California, her short shorts and saltwater sandals soft from the river water.

Inside a little river thicket Bill kissed Steve-o’s friend Mickey. He drove a black Thunderbird that looked like Death, and his pant legs were ripped off at the knees. Bill’s mom called him wild. Steve-o called him over to their house all the time, that is, until he caught him kissing Bill. Then he just pummeled his face all the time. Bill thought it was terrible, and terribly sexy. Mickey liked his bruises , Bill’s curls, and her curious musings. Too bad he healed so quickly. Too bad Bill was only thirteen.

Jenny stares at Bill’s back, bent over the kitchen counter. Bill’s looking for coupons in the newspaper while she waits for the potatoes to bake. Jenny stares at Bill’s bare shoulder, the strap of her white tank top hanging down to her elbow. Jenny steps towards Bill with her hand out. “Bill?” The timer goes off, the doorbell rings, and Rebecca comes in the back door with a casserole and potato chips. Jenny hit hard smashed flat down low.

Rebecca is her red curly hair, wide lips, wide hips, strong-scented, sexy. She speaks in nearly unbearable decibels; she speaks in tongues. “Becky!” Bill leaps from her post at the counter and wraps herself around Rebecca’s neck. Against the laws of physics, the casserole remains stable in Rebecca’s hands.

“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. Was that the doorbell? I can’t believe how hot it is in here! It reminds me of Florida. I hope you have the cocktails ready.” Rebecca flings her things onto the counter and runs to the door. “Well, what a cute little thing you are!” she yells at Virginia, who wears a short white dress. “Hey, everyone! There’s some girl here with lemonade.” Rebecca sweeps her into the kitchen and shoves her into Bill.

Bill rescues the lemonade, puts the pot stickers on the stove, holds Virginia’s hand for a moment. “Thanks for coming.” She gets nervous and goes back to her coupons. Rebecca kidnaps Virginia and pours her a glass and a half of wine. Virginia tries to put her glass on the coaster. “Where’s Jenny? Do you know her?”

Rebecca howls. “Jenny!” she calls out into the room. “Where are you, babe? This girl here want s to know if I know you. I’ve known Jenny forever. You, you’re the odd one out.” Virginia laughs nervously and tries to take a sip without spilling on her dress.

Jenny sits on the pink toilet lid and rubs her feet on the bathmat. “Maybe it’s just fine. Maybe I’m still here and Bill’s just curious.” She takes a deep breath and steps out into the cool, dark hallway.

“Jenny!” Rebecca reaches her long arm across the room and pulls Jenny onto her lap, kissing her shoulder. Jenny pulls her denim skirt down to cover her thighs. She smiles at Virginia. Her ponytail swings dumb and brown, Virginia’s hair like a sheet of water.

Rebecca peers at Jenny through her long eyelashes. “Are you all right, dear? I thought you were excited about this little soiree.”

Jenny makes a pouty face and then laughs, jumping up. “I’ll help Bill in the kitchen.”

Bill stole her parent’s car when she was thirteen and took it to the levy somewhere near the dam. She liked to walk up and down the hood, hot and silver, with her bare feet and swish the weeping willows in her fingers.

Her parents were at home rolling over in their hot bed, dry, breathing in their perpetual fever. They enjoyed the company of Carlo Rossi, said his taste was like a voice in the dark. They wrote a lot of articles, the analysis of literary works in the context of second wave feminism and the downturn of the economy, Carter’s “stagflation.” They thought it was all very sexy. Bill thought it was all “fermented alcoholic nihilism.” She carried a thesaurus in her backpack for such occasions.

Virginia helped Rebecca set the table, feeling overdressed and malnourished. She usually ate bean sprouts, fresh cabbage, shredding carrots, honey mustard dressing. Mashed potatoes, garlic bread, sweet and sour vegetables, marshmallows and chocolate, cokes, wine, and , best of all, Bill’s steaming chicken covered the too-wide table in the too-narrow dining room. They all slid past each other, pressing into the chairs and the walls, getting caught in the telephone cord and the drapes. The edges of the window were beginning to fog up.

“Bill, can we talk a little later?” Jenny leaned into Bill’s back, fascinated by the misty curls along her neck. Bill turned around with an awkward smile. “Okay. What’s?”

“I feel a little lost. I want to be close to you again. I don’t know. I’m sad.” Jenny turned her head sideways. Touching just below Jenny’s ear, Bill smiled sadly.

“All right, let’s go and get happy.” She bites the side of her thumb.

Virginia carries her breasts somewhere beneath her child’s voice. She’s afraid of something. Bill wants to put her teeth on Virginia’s skin, to put pieces of her all over her insides, to close her eyes inside of Virginia’s bones. She looks out the foggy window at the trees window at the trees crawling down from up high, holding the air in their arms. She sees her reflection behind Virginia’s face, hot and red from the kitchen. Virginia catches her eye and stares. She’s serious, not giggling. Bill shudders and tries not to cry, but it grows all over her like moss. She feels like she’s wearing too much clothing, like her elbows are sticky.

Rebecca keeps the noise going all through dinner, the food moving, disappearing into her wide, pretty mouth. Bill watches her looking at the pattern on the tablecloth, lost in it, and realizes how small Rebecca really is. She never noticed her narrow shoulders, how thin and graceful her neck is. Her hair and hips and breasts obliterated her eyes and her tiny face. Bill wonders how much pain she carries inside.

When Bill starts to clear the table, she feels a hand on the small of her back. Now she’s on the back porch, Virginia holding her face, kissing her softly and insistently on her eyes and lips. Bill’s so full and breathless, she starts to pull back and pull Virginia closer, but finds her hands full of silverware. She drops it and pulls Virginia around the side of the house. Her feet are bare, cold, black from the sooty soil, and she leans Virginia back into the slats of the fence.

“I’ve wanted to put my mouth on you since I heard you singing in the broom closet at work.” Virginia’s lips brushing Bill’s ear. “I want to put my mouth on you, press my hands onto your back.” Bill moves her weight from foot to foot, blood rushing to her face.

“Not here,” Bill whispers. Virginia nods with a solemn expression and pushes her finger onto Bill’s lips.

“I want to be the one who makes you happy.” Bill ignores the serious connotations on Virginia’s childish lips and wipes her eyes.

Jenny waits for the other two to leave. She scrubbed dirt off the forks, crushed. She stares at the wad of excess plaster in the corner by the stairs, stiff and cold inside. Bill hums in the kitchen, sliding back and forth with waxed paper under her feet. She’ s humming the Blue Danube Waltz.

Jenny doesn’t understand anymore. She wants everything set before her, no symbols, no suggestions. She wants anatomy and steel blades, teeth, pieces of polished glass, and dirt under fingernails.

Bill peeks around the doorframe at Jenny in the living room, staring in amazement as she slams the front door behind her.

Jenny sells her soul on the weekends. Sometimes she goes dancing alone and pretends she’s someone else. Other times she buys cigarettes and sits on the roof of the tile factory, smoking until she’s sick. Once, she slept in the doorway of the A & P and woke up with blue hands.

Tonight she’s sitting under her brother Scotty’s deck eating her fingernails and drinking hot chocolate. He stares at her through the gaps between the steps, the porch light painting thick shadows across her eyes and mouth. Her nose barely visible, she sniffs and rubs her eyes.

“I don’t think she knows.”

“Knows what?” Jenny bit at him.

“That you’re in love with her.” Scotty’s dogs start barking at cats prowling in the trees.

“I was waiting for the right moment to tell her. I didn’t want to frighten her.”

Scotty has Jenny’s wide eyes, lashless and deep blue under dark eyebrows. “Did you two ever talk about it?”

“I thought so...” Jenny let her tears loose quietly. “Why does it hurt so much? Will it always hurt this much?”

Scotty stares at his sister, curled in a ball under the deck stairs, pine needles in her hair. He reaches through the stairs and runs his finger along the bones in her hands. When she finally falls asleep on his sofa, he hears her breathing. Her hand falls softly off the edge; he puts it back in her lap.

When they were small they buried their toy trucks in the woods behind the house. Sometimes they’d lose them, so Jenny marked the graves with red fabric with rocks to hold it down. Once they dug three feet into the soil and found the naked bones of a cocker spaniel. From its eye sockets rose cracks, finding their way around the skull. Its leg bones were twisted and scattered around its rib cage. Marking it with the fabric, the children quietly buried it again, and went home muddy for lunch, their mother yelling. Scott looks at Jenny for a long time. He wonders if she ever told, if she still remembers.

Bill wakes up in the brittle sunshine shivering, her sheets twisted around her strong legs, her pillow lost. Stomach stirring with anticipation, she worries and smiles. Calling Virginia is at the top of her list, but she must wait until the dinner hour, so she doesn’t appear too eager. She must think of a reason to call in case Virginia doesn’t expect it so soon, in case she meant something quite different than Bill thought.

“Maybe Virginia is one of those women who...just do that, but don’t mean...don’t mean what I thought...” Bill wants something her fingers don’t know how to reach for, playing the piano with her eyes closed, searching for tonic, that source opening, pulling for it. She loses herself somewhere halfway past girl’s ears: just when she wants to open her mouth her stomach drops, her eyes open, and everything goes in and out of focus.

Sometimes they teased her, pulling her behind portable classrooms and running their lips along her neck. When she reached for their hands, their breasts, they left her alone, “I think you misunderstood” soft in her ear.

Once quietly one came back to her, Melissa, hands at her sides. They walked home together, Melissa insisting they block out the light with the blinds. “Is this what you want?” asked Bill, soft to her shoulder. Melissa shuddered, released. Silence. “Is this what you wanted?” she asked herself, knowing Melissa would never come back. She would still laugh at Bill’s jokes and go with her to the movies and the drugstore, but there would be a dark quiet space around them, just big enough for loneliness. Quiet now, hands at her sides, Bill waits.

Virginia calls Bill at three in the afternoon, eager and with no alibi. She does not use euphemisms. “I want to go out with you tomorrow night. I want to go on a date at a restaurant and pick you up in my car, okay?”

Jenny and Scotty pull long on their cokes watching his dogs run back and forth. Scotty pushes the glider back and forth with his feet in the frosty grass. Jenny’s fingertips are red and the air bites her neck. Pulling her sweater up over her ears, she smiles over at her brother.

“Do you still think about Cynthia?” she asks muffled inside her clothes.

“Of course I do. I still see her all the time.” His eyes move away from Jenny’s.

“On dates?”

“No, casual meetings. We live in the same neighborhood for Christ’s sake.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself. I’m just curious, but how is it? Seeing her, I mean.”

“It’s all right.” Scotty rubs his hair. “But it makes it hard to get over her. I’ll talk to a nice lady, the whole while comparing her to Cynthia. Or I’ll wonder what she would think about my promotion. I imagine telling her about it, but she never lets things like that come up.”

“What do you mean?” Jenny asks.

“She’s still in control, you know? I’m still the one waiting and I’ll never be comfortable around her.”

“I’m sorry, Scotty. I didn’t know it still hurt that badly.”

“Yeah, well, it does, and it makes me feel stupid.”

“You’re not stupid, you just got hurt more. It sucks.” She puts her head on his shoulder. “Remember when Bill spent Thanksgiving at Dad’s house with us when we were still in college? We all sneaked out and got plastered at Ryan and Corey’s place, and Bill fell in their pond.”

“Yeah.”

“And Dad walked in on the five of us, naked in the laundry room, trying to dry our clothes before he woke up for work.” She howled, laughing. “He gave me a long talk about the price of my body being the price of my soul. I don’t even know what he could’ve told Bill.”

“Really? Dad gave me some condoms and told me not to let you be exposed to the blunt sexuality of my gender. He said I was a bad influence on you. And, I almost forgot this, when you got in trouble with the drama department, he blamed it on me, too.”

“So, you made me fool around backstage with Kristen Mackenzie during my History of Theater lecture?”

“Apparently,” Scotty said.

“I always wondered why I did that.” He kisses the back of Jenny’s hand and pats her on the head.

Virginia drives a new family sedan, light blue, ridiculously ugly. It makes her look too small and it smells a little like fish. “I bought it from a car rental company. Lord knows how many bodies have been transported to Canada to escape the death penalty.”

Bill feels enormous next to Virginia, being at least four inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, but she’s usually the smallest person around. She could never sit behind anyone in a movie theater or reach the towels on the top shelf without a chair. She figured Virginia had probably never even seen a top shelf.

She tells Bill about her family as they eat their salads. “My mom and dad live nearby and my grandmother lives in Arizona for her lungs. I have cousins somewhere else in Illinois, but I haven’t seen them since my aunt and uncle got divorced.” She flips her hair and looks at Bill. “You ever think they made it all up?”

“What?” asks Bill, stirring her ice.

“Our parents. Mine grew up in different Japanese internment camps in World War II, both born in San Francisco. Then my grandparents on both sides move their families to Chicago within two months of each other. Conveniently, three of them died before I was born, as well as my dad’s brother, who was in the Navy during the time. Then, suddenly, my aunt and uncle on my mother’s side are never to be heard from again. So, do you think they made it all up?”

Bill stares open-mouthed. “What did they make up? Their lives?”

Virginia shakes her hair all over her shoulders. “Anything at all. See, the point is, I have no proof. I’ve never seen our birth certificates, my grandmother isn’t a reliable witness, and for some reason I can’t look up any records involving us. I’m not sure exactly what counties we were all born in, and my parents aren’t very forthcoming. I’ll bet they’re not even my real parents. I’m more than six inches shorter than my mother, and I’m the only person in the family with wavy hair.”

Bill moves her silverware around the table. “Virginia, are you kidding?”

She starts to laugh. “A little bit. My only proof is that my dad and I have the same feet.”

“Well, nobody ever has any proof. We accept what our parents say at a very young age, when we don’t need any proof to believe. For example, my brother and I look remarkably like our maternal aunt but nothing like our mom.”

“Bill, the point is, if we don’t even know who are parents are for sure, and they’re the ones who teach us everything, how can we ever know who we are or what life we should be living? How do I know I‘m not supposed to be in Holland with my real family studying architecture?”

“Do you want to move to Holland?” Bill interrupts.

“It might be cool.”

“Would you want to leave your pseudo-parents, who’ve dedicated their lives to you, in order to fulfill some destiny that’s even more impossible to prove than this one? Why do you assume that your destiny wasn’t to be switched at birth?” Bill’s voice rises beyond “inside voice” limitations, and shredded carrots scatter across the table as she stabs them with her fork.

Virginia narrows her eyes a little, confused. “Bill, I’m just talking about something theoretical, and I’m sorry I upset you.” She puts her hands softly on Bill’s clenched fists.

Bill looks her straight in the eye. “Let’s get our food to go and watch the trains go by.” Virginia smiles and says okay.

Later. It’s cold and dark in Bill’s bedroom, but she leaves her window open. The wind shifts her thin, white curtains easily, shadows on Bill’s face across her eyes wrapped in a worn pink sheet. She feels torn, stripped, naked, her legs sore, bleeding red on the pink sheet, her back so cold nothing behind it, her eyes dry cold nothing behind them in the dark.

Virginia fixes her lipstick in her rearview mirror and stops the car at a gravel driveway. Warm shouts and drinks and music, dancing. She shuffles onto the floor, giggling, looking around...for something.

Bill’s cold; her naked legs swing back and forth; she’s wrapped in a cotton hospital gown, tied behind her. “Well, Bill, it’s still foggy, you know.” Dr. Strong fidgets with his glasses, avoids her darkening eyes. “So much of medicine is trial and error. Most people don’t understand that, but we never claimed to know everything.”

“Why do you keep prescribing pills then? Why are you putting chemicals into my body when you don’t even know what’s wrong?” Tears run down Bill’s red face. “I’m so alone in this. I wish someone would just pretend they knew what was going on with me.”

Dr Strong flips his papers around. “If we had your family’s full medical history, everything would be a lot clearer. Have you asked your parents for their documents? We especially need your father’s because of his...uh, circumstances being so similar...uh.”

Bill stares at the floor, her toes swinging. “They don’t have any.” Red slams behind her forehead. “My dad passed away when I was eighteen. No one knew what was wrong with him, either, said they needed his family’s history.” Bill glares at the blushing Strong. “My grandparents adopted him two months after he was born, and when he asked my grandmother for information, she said they lost all their papers in the house fire when he was ten.

“He went to the Illinois’ birth and death archives to look up his adoption records, some adoption agency connected with a huge drug and medical research center was being audited by the IRS. The company convinced the governor to declare a state of emergency in Illinois during the Gulf War so it could withhold documents that would be detrimental to the defense.

“My father’s brain was eaten from the inside out, destroying itself, making his open face close up on me, leaving me all alone. I watched him try to speak to me, trapped inside of his skull. His words garbled, he begged me to sit with him and hold him while he wept, wondering the whole while who this nice girl crying with him was.”

Bill and Dr. Strong stared at each other, hearts pounding, breathing in unison. “Bill, I think we can figure this out before it gets to that point. Do you remember the names of your father’s doctors?”

“Of course.”

“Between my knowledge of your case and your knowledge of his, I think we can help you.”

Bill holds back her tears and says softly. “Please.”

Scotty wakes up most Saturday mornings wrapped in fairly good-looking women, warm and thirsty. He likes to cook them breakfast, anything they could ever want, and he always asks them how they’re feeling. He says, “That’s good. Well,” looking at his watch, “I hope I run into you again. You’re a nice girl.” He smiles, pats the backs of their hands, which shakes the eggs off their forks. An ignorant asshole dipped in flannel, he does not see the fun ways he ruins people’s expectations, helping them fuck themselves over in one more special way. Jenny calls them Random Acts of Scotty.

“Do other people get this many angry phone calls from their one night stands?” Scotty checks his messages. Jenny rolls her eyes, sighs.

“Other people make sure they are actually having a one night stand. You seem to give women the impression that you’re interested in getting to know them, seeing them as unique individuals in the collage that is humanity.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Scotty, you’re an asshole. Admit it.”

“No.”

“Why do you lie to these women?”

“Because I really do want to get to know them. Why can’t I discover their true natures, sleep with them, and then say goodbye?”

“Because it hurts.” Jenny shoves the kitchen table into his chest, hides from his lashless eyes.

This morning Scotty wakes up wrapped in a young Japanese woman he met in a nice mid-town club. Her name is Virginia, and Scotty has her all figured out. He makes her Belgian waffles with bananas, whipped cream, hazelnut coffee, vanilla pudding, and slices of ripe melon.

When he goes to wake her up, she’s already in the shower. He turns on the T. V. A romantic comedy, he smiles, leaning back. Virginia comes out, her black hair in ropes down her back, dripping onto her towel. She glances at the T. V. “Oh, You’re still here,” she says, confused.

“I made you breakfast, but it’s probably cold by now.” He smiles.

“I don’t eat in the mornings, but I’ll have coffee.” He hands her the hazelnut, grinning with pride. “I, uh, take it black if you don’t mind.” She giggles.

Startled, Scotty heads back to the kitchen. “Sure.” He watches her head to the living room and start knitting in her towel. He decides he should spend a little more time on this one. “So what do you do for a living?” he asks, carrying her coffee out to her.

“I work in a plastic parts factory.”

“Oh, my sister Jenny works in one too! Where is it located?”

“Jenny?” Virginia’s needles stop clicking. Panic. “That’s nice. Well,” she glances at the clock, “I hope I run into you again. You’re a nice guy.” Picking up her knitting, she pats Scotty on the hand and spills his coffee. She grabs her things in the bedroom and slams right into Jenny in Scotty’s hallway. “Hi, Jenny. How’ve you been?”

Jenny tries desperately to be elated, but she hadn’t seen Bill excited about anything since...Jenny almost can’t remember it. She sees Bill’s hands stretched up in front of her face on the front lawn of Scotty’s house. The three of them full of steak and grilled potatoes, Jenny’s got peaches grown in the south and they’re all sticky, Scotty dozing with his dogs under the trees. Jenny touches Bill’s blonde curls softly in the sun, Bill’s hands on her back, Jenny’s back arching into Bill. They lay down in the sawdust near Scotty’s workshop, woodchips like slices of curling sun in the grass, their clothes rumpled and warm. Their faces all over each other, they talk quietly and laugh loudly.

“I love you, Jenny.” And Jenny turns away slightly, agitated by the soft clouds fading the sun, losing herself in wounds she cuts into. “I’m a little tired,” Jenny says. Bill stuck stiff, mouth open, no air today.

Bill’s thirteen. She’s smashing windows behind the auto parts garage. She’s screaming in a voice she doesn’t recognize because now everything’s different. She turned everything around before they could change it on her. Looking for power anyplace she can find it.

Bill got caught behind the Econo Lube and Tune fooling around with Mickey. He had his mouth around one of her breasts, she had her hands on the crotch of his cut-offs when Steve-o and her dad pulled up in the yellow Impala.

Bill’s sitting on the tall stool in the kitchen trying not to cry, her father’s red face moving back and forth across her vision. “You’re thirteen! I didn’t even know you were interested in boys already. And Mickey! I thought you’d have better judgment. Even Steve-o’s cautious about Mickey.” Her father splashes water on his face in the kitchen sink. “I don’t want you to get hurt, especially when you’re so young, Billy.” He looks at her, his face calm once more.

“I can’t wait ‘til you move out!” she shouts. “I’m sick of living here, you and mom too drunk to give a shit about what I have to say. Suddenly, you’re very interested in what my life might be like. How do you think it felt to watch my parents lose themselves in their hatred for the world and for each other? I want to...to annihilate you,”

Bill reaches into her mental thesaurus, her weapon of choice.

Her father leans back against the wall, sunken, his eyes large looking down at linoleum. “That’s why you’re messing around with Mickey?”

“No, Dad. You aren’t listening to me. I would’ve been his girlfriend no matter what you guys were like. You and mom have just given me an excuse to hate you.” Bill raced out of the kitchen before her father could stop her and ran down the street to Mickey’s house. “Drive me to the auto parts garage. I need to mess things up.” Mickey gets his keys.

Bill crying lonely smashing car windows: Mickey watches unvulgar with a cigarette, leaning against his Death car. He waits for the inevitable, Bill crushing her insides with pain, leaving him behind looking like the enemy. But he waits patiently to get her home and safely to her mother.

Bill’s lying crushed now on the living room floor playing and replaying Virginia’s message, figuring it out slowly: the anti-breakup breakup. “Hi, Bill, it’s me. I kind of messed things up last night. I’m not sure what to do about it. [giggle] But, yeah. I’ll call you.”

“Bill?” she hears whispered from the kitchen. The back door clicks shut. “Bill?” “Virginia?” Bill sits straight up on the floor.

“It’s me, honey,” Rebecca peeks into the darkness, her hair alive and soft around her face. “I haven’t heard from you in a few days. Is everything all right?” She sinks slowly onto Bill’s floor, her arms reaching for Bill’s shoulders. She stares into Rebecca’s small face, actually still and quiet, and Bill lets her tears come.

“It all hurts so bad, Becky.” She buries her face in Rebecca’s neck, cool on her hot cheeks.

“Just sit and tell me, baby. I have all day.”

[Author's Note: I've written about 50 more pages, but I have to transfer my files from my old computer to my new one. Anyway, here follows a terrible poem I wrote in about ten minutes if you need to know more about Bill. Thanks!]

Bill through a Keyhole

Bill was always a girl to look out for someone. Except for a brief period at 13, she could have been called completely selfless. Self. Less. Where did she go?

Crying in the middle of making love to a stranger, a woman with dark eyes. Missing her teenaged boyfriend with the dark eyes. Missing someone who knew her. And missing Jenny, too. Oh, Jenny knew her and stole away in the night.

Bill is just past thirty. Bill got off third shift and at noon she met Sheila at the bar and grill. Bill fell asleep on the couch, and Sheila made herself comfortable with TV until 6:30 pm, when she began tickling Bill’s feet with a piece of orange fluff she found under the couch.

Sheila whispered something into Bill’s ear, followed by Bill biting her lip and leading Sheila into the bedroom, which Sheila found to be very small and more pink than she expected and with a lot of light coming in, though the blinds remained closed.

Bill kissed Sheila because she reminded Bill of herself and because it felt good to be seen and felt and smelled. And Sheila became Mickey, and Shelia became Jenny, and Sheila became Sheila when Bill started to cry, and Bill found Bill behind Sheila’s ear when Bill clung to her neck.

Sheila made it warm and Bill made it long, and then they made pancakes and Sheila breathed flour from Bill’s yellow curls.