Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Read online

  I thought again about Elizabeth. It had been good to talk to her —like with Harold— but maybe like Harold she wasn’t what she seemed. She didn’t want to talk about her unhappiness. I guess I wasn’t one to pass judgment. But she was unreliable. Unstable. I touched my swollen cheek: dangerous. Unreliable was the worst.

  I stopped. There it was, tingling at my heart, that feeling. I searched the low steel wool sky, nothing but dark trouble visible above me. The sky was agitated. I could feel the moisture coming. Within seconds the snowflakes broke the ceiling, dropping, not drifting, pelting my raw face. Big icy ones. 180 billion molecules each, no two the same. Pressing me for answers. You recognize us, remember, you and your sister? they seemed to say. This can’t continue. Then just as hastily they fell away, turning to water the instant they landed, spilling over my cheeks like a creek. I know it sounds crazy, but for a split second I missed her, my sister. I missed the Bemidji woods. I missed Harold. The flakes blurred my vision but they weren’t tears. No self-pity. Just snowflakes, like those I’d predicted for Carly. A useless talent, but it made the most sense of all the things that didn’t make sense.

  “It’s beautiful, ay sistah?” Standing in a brightly lit doorway, a mass of Jamaican woman smoked a cigarette, her head wrapped in splashy yellow, black and orange. Then she called to someone inside, over the steel drum music that spiked the air like icicles falling rhythmically to the pavement. She got a shout in return. She turned back to me.

  “C’mon inside, sistah. Good stuff, truss me.” She waved me into the buttery light. She tossed the cigarette into the street and rubbernecked into the deli. “C’mon. Jerk sandy? We got it. Curry goat, yes m’am. Squash cake. Patties. Oh the coco bread! All is good. C’mon now.”

  The woman looked right at me. Smiling. She was . . . albino! “Well, sistah?”

  I wanted no part of her and yet . . .

  “Viva Cuba!” yelled a voice. And with a steady thud of the space, a young, dark cabbage-faced man bolted by and between us, swinging a boom box, breaking our connection. Propeller strobes of blue, white, red and purple revolved over the boom box; a walking carnival! The music loud, not exactly rap, not exactly reggae.

  “El Yonki!” the Cubano yelled to the night, fist to the sky.

  I waved off the Jamaican woman and moved on. She trotted after me, bosoms bouncing, and placed a box of matches in my palm. I kept moving. She called after me, “Next time, sistah doondoos. Disya place.”

  Sister. She’d looked right at me. Didn’t flinch. The albino sisterhood? More than I wanted to deal with at the moment.

  The small matchbox was inscribed with the name and address of the deli:

  Ruthie’s Roti

  Food • Fortunes • Fabrics

  “For the community.”

  I’d never thought of community in the city, or really anywhere. She’d called me sister. My own sister would avoid that. The steady thumping of the boom box, the propeller lights and its human disappeared down the street. Happy.

  Carly. My sister. Very much like a propeller. Once she started moving you knew she was there but you couldn’t see her. Moving so fast.

  Who was she, really? I know, just a half-sister, but nothing, no connection? Discouraging, in a way that went deeper than most. And in the few moments when she stopped moving —like the time with the candlesticks, where she wasn’t sure if she’d gone too far with Momma or if she’d won— in that moment she was like an electron. You could know her position but you couldn’t know where she was headed.

  Like Harold. Like Elizabeth. Maybe like everyone. This too, disappointing.

  Searching for the sanitizer, my hand landed on my cellphone. Seldom used. Like I said, who would I call? I removed it from my coat and stared at it for a moment. I pressed the faceplate once, twice, a third time. Held the phone to my ear. It was afternoon in Mexico or Washington.

  “Hell, yayes!” answered Carly in mid-sentence to someone else. “Who is this?”

  “Carly?”

  “Well, shit yes! Who were you expecting, Wayne Gretsky? Hello?”

  “Carly, it’s Eunis.”

  “Who?”

  “Your sister, Eunis.” Suddenly I was afraid. I’d opened myself to more grief.

  “My sister? Eunis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well damn, it’s been over a year. More. What dya want? You in New York, is that what Mom told me? She’s pissed at you. But good for you.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, but make it quick, I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

  “You still in Mexico?”

  “No, back in Spokane. Is that all you wanted to know?”

  I didn’t want her to go. “Are you happy?”

  “What?”

  “Are you happy? You always seemed so happy. Most people don’t seem to be.”

  “Of course.” The wind roared over Carly’s phone, a wall of air. Then, “Eunis, you think too much. I gotta go. I’ll call you in a few days, okay?”

  “It’s just that—”

  “We’ve got a really bad connection. Catch you next week. Glad you’re doin’ okay in the big city.”

  I was left surrounded by blotted sidewalk and bus fumes. Okay, nothing new, I was on my own.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A woman brushed past me laden with presents. Church carillons drifted from several blocks away. I looked up into the steady snowfall. If they were stellar, sectored, or dendrites, I couldn’t tell. They were cells in motion; their shapes vanished as soon as they met my skin, much like the rest of the world.

  But as I said, I wasn’t going to feel sorry for myself and I wasn’t going to subscribe to Harold’s storybook Christmas, the one he’d read aloud, sanctifying Dickens’s mythic three spirits —Scrooge and all that nonsense— because both he and I knew —though we never discussed it— that there was nothing more pervasive than loneliness at the holidays, fueled by the myth of family. Nevertheless I could get behind the idea that people wanted to see beauty in each other. Even my homeless Charles Dickens left me with that impression. Whether that desire was biological or some randomly scattered instinct, I couldn’t be sure, because it apparently had no roots in my family.

  I did know all things were energy. That C.P. Snow’s law of thermodynamics applied. And that pain, like happiness or hunger or hysteria, could be described as a set of atoms, moving at a certain speed, bouncing in a certain way. And I admitted to myself that I was embarrassed by my mental battles.

  Antidote: a trauma-free childhood; really, it’s in the research. Good attachment to parents. Crap. Problem solving. Check. Moderation in needs and desires. I was giving it a good try. Control over emotions. To be determined. Optimism. Optimism? Just make rational decisions.

  Stepping off the curb a horn blared and a taxi shook the air, narrowly missing me. The most sensible thing to do was to continue to cross, to isolate factors and keep going in one methodical direction. There was objective normative data for ear length, palm length, canthal and philtrum distances. There would be for facial beauty.

  ***

  “Sam,” I said as soon as I was in the apartment, “you know I’d set you free if I could.”

  I raised him out of his cage and stroked him. Any minute the shadows would erupt with inmates’ voices, trying to tell me something. Sam gave me a steady blank stare.

  “I mean really free. But rationally, you wouldn’t survive. Even in Central Park. There are predators everywhere. You’d be a fish out of water. You wouldn’t last twenty-four hours. I’m sorry.”

  I lowered him back into his cage. I lit a few candles. Sam got his food pellet, half the size of a checker, and a carrot. For me, tomato soup from a can. Crackers. No voices. A clear view across to the East Side. The evening was uneventful. Beautiful.

  “Thank you.” I shut my eyes, acknowledging goddess Freyja, goddess of beauty and sexuality, magic . . . and death.

  “Enough of that.”

  I opened the
Life & Style Weekly to Jennifer Anniston, an expose of a real goddess. I felt sorry for her. She was probably a nice woman. And stunning. Why don’t they leave her alone?

  Momma was doubtless reading the same article. Put. The magazine. Down.

  So I wrote in my journal:

  “Harold,

  I’ve had an experiment in mind. If I use the normative data for 25-year-old male and female facial structure (for instance skull length 22.410±0.197, height 9.673±0.106 and width 10.513±0.115), as well as the other norms, and I use the computer software and printer at work, I can create a 3D normative face (or pretty darn close) for each sex. Then, using the lab staff as respondents, I can isolate preferences (by offering different hair color, eye color, lip options, etc. on those normative faces). I’ll have to be careful because I doubt Warring will authorize it, but . . .

  What do you think?”

  Harold. The stack of books Eliz had pulled from his box waited on the counter. I placed them there, neatly, with the intention of reading: David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart & Other Short Stories, American Notes.

  But I was indifferent. No, I was resistant. Because, Harold, I’d given you too much credit for having the answers. You’d only cause me more pain. But okay, I picked up American Notes for General Circulation. I re-read the passages from Dickens:

  “One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different public institutions . . . One of them is a Lunatic Asylum . . . capable of accommodating a very large number of patients.

  . . . In the dining room, a bare, dull dreary place . . . a woman was locked up alone. She was bent, they told me, on committing suicide. If anything could have strengthened her resolution, it would certainly have been the insupportable monotony of such an existence.

  . . . The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled, so shocked me that I abridged my stay . . . and declined to see that portion of the building in which the refractory and violent were under closer restraint.

  . . . this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded humanity . . .”

  Atoms are ageless; they’re forever, until they’re not. Inside it was modern, but the container was more than 150 years old. Could a beautiful molecular structure like The Octagon maintain ancestral scars? Walls weren’t supposed to breathe, but if I focused . . . I could imagine them exorcising me. And I knew Harold had read those sections to me.

  Coincidence or mathematical probability? Either was plausible. Too many choices. The hand sanitizer wasn’t in reach. Nor would Elizabeth be. Stop. Fatigue washed over me. I closed the book; its draft wafted past my chin and cheek. I snuffed out the candles. I slipped into bed. I tossed and turned.

  I found myself walking into the lab. Someone had already lowered the lights. Every cage was open. Every cage empty. Where were the inmates?

  The door to the lab closed behind me. I hung up my coat. I peered into the first row of empty cages and walked deeper into the room. Heart rate up. Adrenalin energizes the body. Leave. Make rational decisions.

  Growing quickly but indistinguishable from my heartbeat, was a rumble. Mechanized. No, on closer attention, small feet. Millions and millions of small feet. A shrilling. Like locusts billowing up over the countertops, a gray wave of rodents of all sizes climbed my legs, ran up my arms, dropped from the ceiling into my hair, screeching, tearing at my flesh. Eating me alive.

  I woke in a sweat. Sheets adhered to my skin, an unwanted cocoon. It wasn’t yet sunrise.

  “Sam! Sam, what do you want me to do?”

  I switched on the light next to my bed, unglued the bedding from my arms and thighs. Naked across the room, I turned on the light in the kitchen illuminating Sam’s cage. He lay motionless in the center —on his back, capsized, tiny claws curled. I’d done it again.

  “Sammy!” I flung open his cage. Nothing. I held him in my palm. Rigor mortis. “Oh no, no, no, please no. Sam, what have I done now?” I propped myself against the counter, numb, but not the way I liked.

  My phone buzzed. It buzzed again, a message. I stared at Sam, much as he did at me. Vacantly. I tapped the phone and retrieved the voice message:

  “Eunis. Carol Warring. I’m sorry to call you so late. I need you to come in tomorrow morning. I know you don’t work till the evening, but we need to discuss some things. This is mandatory. Promptly at 9:45 AM, please.”

  There was something in Warring’s voice, an edge that made me stretch my shoulders. Me being oversensitive.

  “I let you down, I let you down, Sam. I’m sorry, Sam, I’m so sorry.” The apartment grew smaller, that slow almost imperceptible breathing. Pacing from one wall to the next, around the circumference, it was a quick trip, fussing with my fingers. Disinfectant didn’t protect those I touched.

  “You deserved at least one day of freedom, Sam, even if it would have killed you.” I caught my own thin reflection in the window, fiddling nervously. I clasped my fingers, held them tightly. I squeezed them until they throbbed, until no blood moved.

  Okay. Too much noradrenalin means panic. Breathe.

  They were going to try to take me down at work. They knew about Sam. Maybe Elizabeth said something. Maybe the hospital tracked me down and Warring heard what I’d done, what I’d thought about doing. I wasn’t going to hurt myself. It was just a thought, like so many others. I was responsible. I was self-reliant. Sam was only a dead rat, after all. He would’ve been dead soon anyway. He stared at me from the countertop.

  I poured through the kitchen cabinets, one after another, pulling out several plastic containers, sizing them up for Sam’s burial. Not right. I put it back. No, not that one either. No, wrong effing size, damn it! No! No! No! I watched myself hurl the last one against the cabinet, where it ricocheted into the glass by the sink, shattering it.

  “Shoot! Shit! Shit!”

  I barreled to the high-backed chair and flopped into it, pissed out of proportion with myself. Even as I knew I was overreacting, I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I couldn’t seem to do anything right. I sat for almost half an hour, until the pale morning sun reached across the East River, extinguishing the city lights and eventually fetching me back to the surface.

  The red cedar box sat on the triangular table to my right. I removed my journal. Cupping the box in both hands, I ran my fingers slowly over it and raised it to my nose, drew in the rich cedar aroma. It further relaxed me.

  “Harold, forgive me. I can do better. I will do better. Starting now.”

  “This is where you will rest Sam. Harold gave it to me. It’s precious.” But again, I questioned myself. “Or would you prefer simple earth around you?”

  There were so many answers. I needed to find those that fit.

  ***

  I walked out of the elevator holding the cedar box. I wore my dark glasses but not the hood. I marched, head up, through the Octagon rotunda, past other congregating tenants jiggling their baby strollers and sorting through their mail. Seeing me for the first time, they gaped. I tossed my hair. What the hell. At least one day of freedom.

  Down the steps and into the park, the morning chill roused me. “Well,” I said aloud, “I feel better already.” Two women on a bench turned in response and then continued their conversation. It wasn’t so bad.

  Just before the cobblestones surrounding the lighthouse, a tree stood in a patch of open ground that wasn’t deep in snow. Kneeling, I placed the box to my side and began digging, bare hands. A few passersby noticed.

  An elegant older woman with a walking cane stopped to watch me. “Did you lose something, dear?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I turned to acknowledge the woman and startled her.

  “Oh my.” She moved on as quickly as possible. And that, I realized again, was how it was going to be.

  The ground was simply too hard. My fingernails were caked in brown and broken, my hands raw. I leaned against the tree. “Okay, Sam, I’ll find you another burial plot. Better.”

  With the cedar box b
ack in my arms, I moved toward the lighthouse, thinking aloud as I went, scattering the few passersby. Not my problem.

  I tugged on the heavy metal lighthouse door. Padlocked, it didn’t budge. I banged on the door. “Charles, Charles are you in there?” No reply but the morning wind which had become kinder around the island’s rocky point. Too many locked doors. It was my job to open them.

  I removed my dark glasses. The few remaining spectators scuttled briskly away.

  I don’t know if it was the clean air or the sun turning the horizon sapphire blue that inspired me, but I took it all in. Right there, I decided Warring wasn’t the enemy; that I was grateful for my job, my apartment and the chance to start anew. Turning in a complete circle, across the river to Queens, across the quarter mile to New York’s east side and then to the path back to The Octagon. I kept spinning in circles, again and again, until I was dizzy dancing. The giggle in Momma’s hallway closet came to mind. Was it the joy of hiding or the anticipation of being found? I thanked Sam for what he had taught me: at least one day of freedom.

  “You seen somebody?” said a city sanitation guy, coming from behind the lighthouse. “Cause somebody been in there, somebody been foolin’ with the locks.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Elizabeth was leaving Mrs. Warring’s office just as I arrived.

  “I’m sorry.” Eliz brushed by, awkward and hushed, as Warring checked her watch, hustled me into her office, and closed the door. I’d decided to replace my large dark glasses with the gray tinted ones the optometrist gave me before leaving Bemidji. Head up.

  “Sit, please, you’re almost late.” Warring had a particular guise when she was afraid or angry —they were almost the same— and she had it this time. “What’s in the box?”

  The cedar box! I was still cradling it. Shit. “Aah . . . something I intended to drop off before coming here. I’m not used to the early mornings.” Already excuses.