water.”
“I thought they were going to start using that gloppy stuff, the water-substitute?”
“They did, but we were only allowed to get in for, like, twenty minutes, then all of a sudden some girl started screaming and she was having an allergic reaction and so they decided to drain the pool in case it was poisonous or something.”
They are damp and cheery, reeking of chemicals, white mulberry skin puckered from their day in the… whatever it was. Tahnee really is a beauty, with that ash-blonde hair and tippy nose, thin, wispy; Julie is chubby and will never be so pretty; her smile is pretty, though, but she has the pleading look of a beaten dog while Tahnee – there is that imperious, snotty expression, and she is always batting her eyelashes at men. You can see she is going to be a real heartbreaker. She never smiles but there is already something frightening about her. Though she is not even fifteen, totally pre-pubescent and flat-chested, there is something about her… an insect queen.
“We’re starving, Mom,” says Tahnee.
“Yeah, Mom, what’s for dinner?”
“I’m not going to tell you to go and hang up your towels.”
“Why not?”
“Because I expect you to do so without being told.” It’s six o’clock, dinner time for normal people. There is nothing in the cabinets or in the freezer that the girls will eat. Why not? Everything is the same, pads or stacks or cubes of texturized cultured processed food-product, grown hydroponically in sterilized growth medium in factories; flavored with emollients, sauces, herbs, spices as well as artificial flavorings and preservatives. The food contains no by-products, all of it is pure and organic. Next week she’ll go see a lawyer.
“Where’s Dad?” says Julie.
It was probably better to get the whole thing over with sooner rather than later.
“Listen, kids,” she says, “things didn’t work out between me and Slawa.”
Julie’s face opens in a howl.
“Why?” says Tahnee. “Slawa’s not coming back?”
“He wasn’t your daddy anyway, Tahnee, so I don’t want to hear anything from you. I don’t want anybody making a fuss, either of you!”
Julie is weeping. “I always knew that was going to happen!” Julie will never get anywhere in this world; she has low self-esteem, Murielle thinks, and is, according to Doctor Ray-Oh-Tee, whose show is on at four, overly case-sensitive.
“You’ll get used to it, now we can have lots of fun without any big beer belly grunting and bitching and slapping his way around the place.”
“Daddy was nice when he wasn’t drunk,” Julie says.
“Right, but he was almost always drunk. One husband a Diamond-C dust dope head and one alcoholic, that’s enough for anybody.”
“Nooooo –”
“You don’t know anything, he didn’t let you see but there was never a single second when he didn’t have a beer in his hand and he went through a six-pack a night easily. That is why he was always in front of the TV in a catatonic stupor and plus he kept a bottle of bourbon going on the side – look, he wasn’t the worst guy in the world and I know you’re going to miss him –”
“I’m not,” says Tahnee, “I don’t even remember him already. It was like having a stuffed pig –”
“Okay, that’s enough. Anyway, we’re all going to have to be tough and strong. I’m thinking, we’re going to get out of this dump and travel and have an interesting life.”
“But I like it here,” says Julie. “My friends are here.”
“Not me,” says Tahnee, “let’s get out of this dump. Anyway, you don’t have any friends, remember, Julie?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what you said, you don’t have any friends, remember? When was that, Saturday?”
“Yeah, but –”
“All right, stop it you two. Tahnee. I tell you what. As a celebration, I’m going to order us a pizza, how do you like that?”
“Yeah, yeah! Pizza. I want mrango,” says Julie.
“I’m gonna have to borrow some credit from you kids. Who has money left on their micro-chips? I’ll pay you back, I’ll have cred tomorrow. My chip is over the limit.”
“I hate mrango,” says Tahnee. The two girls begin to squabble. Apparently they have already forgotten about Slawa’s absence. But whether that is due to indifference, or some type of brain damage, Murielle can’t determine.
Around midnight Murielle wakes with a start. Someone has come into the house. “Slawa,” Murielle says, “Is that you?”
There is no answer. She doesn’t even have the money to have the locks changed, with twenty-four credit chips maxed out and she can’t keep up with the monthly interest as it is, even if they let her have more credit. In the morning she will have to figure out how to get another chip, people do that all the time. They can’t go without groceries, can they? She should have asked Slawa for his set of keys, but that would have been awkward, he was in a rage when he drove off.
Murielle looks out the window, maybe it’s someone outside? But there’s no one there. All she can see is the almost full moon, with its sneering face – a Happy Face gone wrong. Long ago a conceptual artist had a grant from a non-profit arts foundation to go up there to make a face out of richly hued pigments (influenced by Anish Kapoor); only, after dumping two mile-wide circles to form the eyes, and almost completing the mouth, an explosion blew up the shuttle – and the artist – and turned that happy smile into the snarl of today’s moon.
She remembers Slawa keeps a baseball bat under the bed and now she fumbles around and, holding it in one hand, a flashlight in the other, goes down the stairs. Her hands are sweating, so slippery she can barely hold the bat. If a burglar has broken in, she really doesn’t see herself hitting him over the head. What can a burglar take, anyway? Nothing that would be missed.
She flicks on the light in the living room. Tahnee is lying on the couch, without panties, her legs spread and with the Patel boy from next door – the older one, Locu – and then Tahnee stares at her, with those cat-eyes, dilated, not even startled. For a second Murielle is about to say, “Oh, excuse me,” and turn off the light.
Her daughter has an expression on her face of pure… contempt, irritation, that someone is disturbing her and the boy. How old is that little punk Locu, anyway? He is kneeling on the couch in front of Tahnee’s parted legs, he turns and looks at Murielle with a sopping face like a dog feeding on a carcass, about to have rocks flung at him. “Pontius fucking Pilatés,” she says, dropping the bat, “what are you doing, get the hell out of here, Locu, I’m going to call your parents –”
Eyes without guilt
Tahnee sits, her eyes huge, sleepy but cold, without guilt. “Oh, don’t call his parents, Mom.”
“You’re only fourteen years old, you filthy little bitch,” she says. “I’m going to call the police!”
Locu, in his pajamas, bolts out the door.
Lazily Tahnee pulls up her panties. It is hot and her thin nighty, printed with a pixyish, mop-headed cartoon tot, only comes to the top of her legs, baby-doll style. Murielle grabs her daughter by the arm and slaps her across the face. Tahnee barely winces. “I’m almost fifteen, Ma. Don’t do dat shit.”
There is a reek of aerosol, or spray paint, in the air, sickly as glue. Something was knocked over? Or more of the weird polluted marsh fumes.