“Lookers” by A. D. Nauman

JENNA SAT IN THE BACK ROW like she used to in high school and eyeballed her: Luanne, the original WRNL Good Looker, up front sitting straight-as-a-board with her glossy flowy mahogany hair down to her waist; Luuu-anne, all swishes and smiles, snug in a pink blazer, turning to grin encouragingly at the girls behind her. Born-to-be-pleasant Luanne, with no history of schizophrenia or alcoholism in her family. This was the kind of girl guys liked: beautiful but not too intense.

Jenna must have been chosen for a contrast. Jenna’s hair swelled in loose curls and her lips took up too much room on her face, her jawbone so steep it cast black shadows on her skinny neck. Yet everyone said she was gorgeous. The other Good Lookers were all blondes, with dumb slow-blinking Bambi eyes and teeny noses planted in the center of valentine faces. Luanne and Jenna were the only brunettes, which was probably why they got paired up.

Big D sat on a metal desk up front and talked at them in his radio voice. The job was to ride around town in the WRNL Winner Wagon and give away free money. It was Big D’s idea to hire luscious young girls and call them Good Lookers. They were to search for cars with men in them, as the Good Looker concept did not seem to apply to women, pick a car, then radio in a description and the license plate number, which Big D would broadcast between oldies. Big D paused to ask if anyone knew how to work a CB. Only Jenna raised her hand, but it was the others’ ignorance that delighted him. He continued: if the Lucky Driver was listening to WRNL, he’d know to pull over and get a free fifty bucks. The girls were to jump enthusiastically out of the Winner Wagon and run in their high heels to the Lucky Car. Big D demonstrated how they were to run—holding their arms out from their sides like ladies, not balling up their fists and jogging like guys.

Big D did not look like his radio voice. He was old and had that wormy kind of fat on him, with splotches on his face that went all the way up over the top of his cue ball head. When one of the blondes asked a question, Big D gripped his chest like her beauty was giving him a heart attack and pretended to faint. Then he hopped up and yelled, “Ask anyone, girls, and they’ll tell ya—I am one crazy dude—” He never did answer the question. Jenna would have liked to get a long piece of cord like a clothesline and twist it around Big D’s neck and pull it until his fat spotted head popped off. Probably it wouldn’t pop so much as squish off, and splutter down his chest, with veins and other stringy stuff trailing down the nubby fabric of his shirt.

At the end of orientation Big D left the room walking backwards and bowing and wiping pretend tears from his eyes, and a secretary with lumpy legs brought in their schedules. No one got to work full-time—Big D had hired too many girls. The pay would be dirt—staying at the Pizza Hut would’ve been better. But working here, Jenna would get to wear nice clothes and hear her name on the radio, feel more real. Luanne slipped into the chair beside hers and murmured, “Listen. I say we walk to the Lucky Winner car and hold our arms however we like.” Jenna squinted her face in a fake smile: Luanne was one of those girls who’s assertive on the sly. Jenna would have liked to pluck the Bic pen out of Luanne’s hand and jab it into her eye socket and watch the blood gush out of her dumb surprised face. Luanne leaned closer, peering at Jenna’s copy of the schedule even though she had one of her own, and Jenna got a close-up of Luanne’s faultless bronze Greek-looking profile. Luke would have called her stunning. Jenna tilted away from the flawless, flowery presence. Stunning, he would’ve said, not because he was a flirt, but because he always found a compliment for people. His image flickered in her mind, smiling and nodding, hair flopping forward, perched on his car hood with his guitar, fingers stretched along the fret. Happy-go-lucky Luke, a guy who liked everyone and everything. I’m sorry, his voice said again in her head: the break-up was on instant replay, sometimes whispering, sometimes loud. I have to move on. You’re beautiful, but—too intense. Even someone who liked everything couldn’t like her.

THEIR FIRST DAY OUT in the Winner Wagon, Luanne drove. It was Fifties Friday, which meant every third song Big D played was extra stupid. The Winner Wagon was practically new—a ’77 Chevy with an AM/FM radio—but the radio had to stay on WRNL AM all the time, and Big D was always on, telling dumb blonde jokes, selling discount furniture. “WRNL,” sang a chorus of Black-sounding white women, followed by the babbling Big D, “Your oldeeees station innnnnnn Newport News, Virgin-ya.”

They drove. Luanne began singing along with the radio, “Ooh baby baby it’s a wild world—” Jenna had never heard worse singing. Her eyes landed on Luanne’s hands gripping the wheel responsibly at ten and two, her nails sensibly short and coral. Jenna and Luanne had not been actual friends in high school, but Jenna knew all about her: Luanne lived in Riverside, in a huge brick Colonial with a second garage for her dad’s boat. Jenna lived across Warwick Boulevard, behind the Burger King, where the homes were clumped up together like little green Monopoly houses. Luanne was an honor student and the president of the Keyettes. Her older brother was one of the guys killed in the car crash on graduation night, but the brave Luanne had come through it—knew how to do that—went around talking to adults, went to family counseling—with her parents; then went off to college and came back talking smart, with a boyfriend in pre-law.

“We have to find someone,” Luanne said, flashing a smile, her bangs like a wood block on her forehead. “How about him?” They approached a Cadillac. “No,” Luanne answered herself. “Already rich.” She only wanted to give money to appreciative poor people. “Him? Hm, no.” Jenna watched the ruffly yellow sleeve flap over Luanne’s shoulder and was reminded that now she had to go buy fluffy dresses like Luanne’s. Big D had not liked the black miniskirt and sequined high-heeled sandals she had on today. His eyes went up and down her front and his throat gurgled, but then he frowned, declaring she was yummy enough for an afternoon snack, but they were after a more innocent look—feminine and cheerful—like Luanne’s.

Luanne was Big D’s favorite. She’d stood next to him after the meeting and spoke softly in his ear, which caused him to cock his head and pant like a dog. Luanne giggled, apparently taking this as flattery, and now Jenna had to be more like her—a proper little virgin type. Not a real virgin, of course, but the type who only sleeps with a long-term steady boyfriend instead of a series of three-week boyfriends, though Luke had stayed with her for six months. Time to move on, his cool voice cracked in her head. Big-hearted Luke, such an eager listener, nodding and spurting out sympathetic noises that encouraged Jenna to talk until she’d told him the whole entire story of Joe McKenzie, which she’d never told anyone, not even a part of it. It’s okay, Luke kept saying, stroking her hair. Go ahead and cry, it’s okay. But it wasn’t okay. He’d gotten tired of her. Who wouldn’t?

Luanne began calling in descriptions of cars. Jenna had to show her how to use the CB and tell her the models and makes of the cars; all Luanne could figure out was what color they were. It took a while to find a fool listening to WRNL, but they got one—a guy in an ancient Chrysler. Jenna made Luanne award the prize money, not wanting the bother of getting out of the van and walking in the weeds by the roadside. Luanne came flouncing back all pink with excitement: their first Lucky Winner was a fireman whose wife just had a baby! God.

THAT EVENING JENNA WALKED into her house and found no phone message from Luke. Luke was not going to call. She stood at the kitchen counter with a rusty screwdriver shoved up inside her chest and made herself a sandwich out of cheese slices. She carried it into the living room, where her mother was staring at M*A*S*H reruns, and tried sitting beside her on the couch. Her mother didn’t drink anymore, but she was called an alcoholic anyway. “I should embroider a big red ‘A’ on all my blouses,” she’d said after her first AA meeting. It was over a year ago but she wasn’t any better as far as Jenna could tell, just mean in a different way. Marla the Party Girl stripped off the front, now she was like a wall without wallpaper, the rough underneath part, pale and bumpy with old glue. Usually she only spoke to Jenna to accuse her of stealing change out of the flowerpot, but Jenna attempted a conversation. “Do you remember Luanne, that girl I went to high school with?”

“Oh, yeah,” replied the faraway voice, “that girl who took the Sears class with you.”

“No, Mama, that was Di-anne. Di-anne. I’m talking about Lu-anne.”

“Oh.”

“I said Lu-anne.” Jenna snorted at the thought of Lu-anne bothering with the Sears modeling class, where you learned things like never wear mascara just on your top lashes or you will look off-balance. Girls like Luanne did not need to be told such things—they were naturally balanced. It was only girls like Jenna, saving up their Pizza Hut money to pay for the class themselves, who had to trot after someone like Miss Judi, a real former Miss Virginia, and suck in every word she said because otherwise they would know nothing at all. After her year as Miss Virginia, Miss Judi married into old Tidewater money and had a son, and now she taught modeling part-time to teenage girls at Sears, cheering as the girls came down the runway outside the main entrance in the mall, “Look at you!”—her eyes jacked open wide for an imaginary camera—“Miss America!” Even when they were only rehearsing, a crowd gathered to watch them teeter up the runway. “Look at you! Miss America! Jenna honey, smile! Smile, Jenna, smile!” Fuck you, Miss Judi, fuck you! Jenna hated her. But she had to go every Wednesday to learn the tips and feel the crowd look at her and feel visible again after Joe McKenzie.

She finished her sandwich except for the crust. “Lu-anne, Mama, I’m talkin’ about Lu-anne.”

“Well how am I supposed to know?”

Someday, Jenna realized, Luanne would be Miss Judi, prinking around in tan pumps, married to an up-and-coming Virginia politician, attending important luncheons. Who would Jenna be? She got up and crossed the dining room toward her bedroom. At the table sat her father reading fishing magazines, which he did every night, though he never went fishing. His eyes snapped onto her as she passed but she didn’t bother speaking. The schizophrenia was on his side—in a sister and a girl cousin, who’d seemed fine until their late teens—and now that Jenna was almost twenty, her father regarded her as a source of imminent problems. She was getting older, more female; she had to be scrutinized for bizarre behavior, delusions, hallucinations. “Don’t be oversensitive,” he’d bark. “Don’t overreact.” The day she came home crying after her first time with Joe McKenzie, November of her ninth-grade year, her father was furious because she couldn’t say what was wrong. “Pull yourself together!” he’d commanded and she’d tried. She’d pressed her legs tight together and her arms hard against her sides and stood lifeless, thinking of their Thanksgiving bird, trussed and muscled into the oven, roasting with a muffled squeal as people peered in at it.

Safe in her room, she shook her Fleetwood Mac album out of its cover, dropped it onto her turntable, set the needle, shut off the lights, and lay on her bed. Across the short patch of brown grass was Joe McKenzie’s former house, and in the room that used to be his, a single lamp was lit. She imagined suddenly seeing him there, his rugged face gazing back at her. A hard breath caught in her chest and made her skin hot. Hadn’t he been her true love? For two whole years she thought so. “You were my true love,” she said to the house and smiled at how it would hurt Luke to know she’d said it.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK Luanne drove again, up and down the peninsula. Jenna sat watching the smooth blue stripe of river, the green stripe of lawn, broad white sidewalks, blacktop parking lots: the flatness of the Tidewater terrain made her mind fold up on itself. Her brain had nothing to do but make lists of everyone she hated: Luanne, Big D, her father, her mother, all the blonde Good Lookers, and especially the Lucky Winners. Why did they get to be so lucky? She pictured herself in a frilly dress flouncing up to the next Lucky Winner’s car, whirling a shotgun round and blowing off his Lucky Winner head. The head like an exploded melon on the hot car seat. “Have a nice day! From Double-You-Are-in-Hell!” Over and over she saw this, her eyes squinting through the windshield.

“Are you okay?” asked Luanne. Considerate, caring, well-tuned Luanne.

Jenna croaked, “I have to pee.”

Luanne pulled into the Hardee’s and waited in the van while Jenna stood at the restroom mirror brush-brush-brushing her hair, adding more lipstick, powder, lipstick. She never looked right. She went into a stall and sat. Two weeks and one day since Luke had moved on and no word and where was he now? Holding the car door for some other girl, looking interested in some other girl’s problems. She thought how “Luke” and “Luanne” both started with L-U and imagined him meeting her at a party and falling in love, because who wouldn’t fall for the lovely untroublesome Luanne? Luke and Luanne riding in his Mustang, Winner Wagons pulling them over to give them money. The Mustang driving off a cliff, their bodies like crash test dummies hitting the windshield.

And wouldn’t Joe McKenzie laugh if he could see her now, hiding in a bathroom stall, her fingers creeping up the sides of her face and squeezing her skull. You’re nuts, his voice said again in her head: Crazy bitch. God, you and Cindy. Women—you’re all nuts. In the woods, her skin ripping, bits of earth rubbing in, his weight crushing. His face smiling over the chain-link fence, Whoa!

She started to cry: Luke had been a kind of levee, standing shocked and righteous between her and these memories of Joe McKenzie, and now Luke was gone and Joe McKenzie was coursing through her mind like flood water, filthy, overflowing the creases in her brain. Brain chemicals. “The females have bad brain chemicals,” her father’s voice informed. Then came the sound of her mother’s harsh laugh: “Thank goodness for bad brain chemicals! No one to blame!” Her mother had looked directly at her, uncharacteristically, and said: “All anyone wants is to not be bothered and not be blamed. You remember that.” Jenna hadn’t remembered it. She’d been a bother to Luke; she’d blamed Joe McKenzie.

Suddenly Luanne’s voice was in the bathroom: “Hello hello?”

“Just a minute!” Jenna hollered, and sat in the stall for another five minutes.

When she climbed back into the Winner Wagon, Luanne had an announcement: “I feel we need to talk. I feel angry having to sit here and wait for so long.” She must have learned to speak like this in family counseling.

Jenna stared at her, unblinking, wishing she could send laser beams out of her eyes and explode Luanne’s brain right inside her skull so that bloody brain slime oozed out of her eye sockets and nostrils. Then Jenna proclaimed, with a dramatic little catch in her voice, “Oh, Luanne! I’m sorry! Things are really awful at home—my mom’s an alcoholic and my aunt’s in the mental hospital!” Luanne’s eyebrows flew up into her bangs. “And my boyfriend—last week he just went nuts! He thought I was with this other guy who used to live next door to me and he’s been coming round every night with a shotgun!” Luanne gasped. “His name is Luke Freeman. If you ever meet him at a party don’t go out with him.”

“Oh no, I never would! Oh, Jenna—”

Jenna. The sound of it reverberated in her head—her name on Luanne’s lips, elongated, oval. Luanne made it sound like something with substance that was connected to a person who was real. Luanne made it sound as though she cared about Jenna. “Is there anything I can do?”

Oh, now she had to do something. Jenna looked into the stupid pretty face—so trusting, undisturbed, the eyes like comic book character circles. What could Luanne do? What possibly could this girl do? Bake brownies? Jenna managed, in her best sweet Luanne voice, “It’s good to know you’re . . . here.”

“Oh, I am!” Luanne exclaimed, “You can count on me!” ecstatic at this apparent breakthrough between them. But Jenna liked hating Luanne. Jenna smirked with hidden teeth: she’d get her, she’d get them all—Big D, all the Good Lookers, the Lucky Winners—everyone, somehow, and in the end the Winner Wagon would blow up in a column of red and orange flames.

IN THE DARK SHE LAY, her knees to her chest, Fleetwood Mac droning, images and sounds washing up on high tide in her brain. Whoa! He stood at the chain-link fence between their backyards, shirtless, a spray of black hair down his chest to the waistband of his shorts. Whoa! I just moved next door to Miss America! She was out in her backyard to get a tan so she wouldn’t be such a pale-white ghost starting high school. Her bikini top had gotten way too tight, and his eyeballs could not keep still. You could use a Coke, he’d said, and she thought he meant he’d bring her one; then she saw he expected her to come inside his house. She hesitated. Her parents were home, but they never watched out the windows. Come on in! He was so eager, and she wasn’t sure what to do, so she went into his house and sat at the table in his kitchen which was so hot and crowded with sealed-up boxes. He handed her a bottle of Coke, small and voluptuous and frosty-cold. She rolled it against the insides of her sunburned arms.

The next day and the day after, every day all summer, she had a Coke in his kitchen. He taught evening classes at Christopher Newport College; he was the smartest man she’d ever met. He had a master’s degree in geology and a rock collection: Look at this one, he said, a deep pink shard held loose between his thumb and forefinger. Isn’t it gorgeous? She nodded, because he expected her to. It’s not a gem stone. It’s quartz. It’s gorgeous, but it has no value at all. Isn’t that remarkable? Yes, she agreed, quartz, and the word took on a weight and sank to the bottom of her stomach. He wanted to pin up her gorgeous long curly hair like Miss America’s, so he got some of Cindy’s bobby pins. Then he got a pair of Cindy’s high-heel shoes and they nearly fit Jenna, and he posed her in front of a full-length mirror and she saw how he looked at her, every inch of him enthralled. She realized: he was in love with her. Their reflections stood together, his no taller than hers, his face ready to explode from the sight of her. You are so lovely, he couldn’t help but say, and he couldn’t help but put his thick lips on her bare shoulder. She was so beautiful, she had this power—she’d made him love her—made this smart man love her—more than he loved his own wife.

LUANNE WAS SINGING AGAIN, “She said look, what’s your game?” Tone-deaf. Jenna imagined stabbing Luanne with a butcher knife at a traffic light, gobs of blood splattering around the dashboard and ceiling and Luanne’s pink blouse. Luanne’s lifeless body draped over the steering wheel and Jenna calling in, “Big D! Big D! Good-Looker Luanne don’t look so good no more!”

They started to follow a Ford Monarch with a “Jesus Is Coming” bumper sticker. Luanne called it in. Over the radio Big D’s voice bellowed, “Mr. Blue Ford Monarch, the Good Lookers are looking for you! Are you tuned in?” He was. His back started to bounce and the car pulled over.

“Why don’t you go this time?” said Luanne, smiling all her right-sized teeth. “It’ll cheer you up!” Jenna hesitated. Then she grinned, climbed out, and hurried toward the car like Luanne, waving and flouncing. The guy’s long dumb face was eager behind the glass, his window going down in jerks, “Ah won! Ah won!”

“Yes sir you did!” Jenna burbled, sounding as idiotic as she could. “You won fifty dollars! And, specially for you—a blow job from Good-Looker Luanne!” He kept smiling and nodding, smiling and nodding, then: “Pardon?”

Jenna passed him the check. “Have a great day!” and sprinted back to the car.

“Look at you!” Luanne exclaimed. “You’re beaming!”

“Look at me!”

“Listen. You give away the money from now on. It makes me happy to see you happy.”

Jenna heard herself laugh, high-pitched, staccato, far away.

THE NEXT DAY she climbed into the Winner Wagon with a brown lunch bag: “I hope you don’t mind. I’m taking this salami to my aunt in the mental hospital after work. It’s kinda smelly.”

“Oh I don’t mind,” Luanne replied. “Gee, it smells like dog doo.”

All afternoon it smelled like dog doo, made the whole car smell like dog doo, baking in the sun on the back seat, until they found another Lucky Winner.

“Congratulations!” Jenna said to a laughing chinless man. “You won fifty dollars and this lovely complimentary salami!”

“Thank you!” blathered the idiot, reaching out a piggy hand for the check and the bag. Back in the car Luanne asked, “Did I see you give your aunt’s salami to that guy?”

“Huh? No.”

Long pause. “Then where is it?”

“Huh? Oh. I threw it out. It musta been rotten. It smelled like dog shit.”

But she couldn’t just keep doing dog shit. That evening she left her room and walked to the woods at the end of her street, hesitating at the edge: she hadn’t been inside since her second summer with Joe McKenzie, when finally she’d complained, “Can’t we just use the house?” Cindy was never home until 5:30. In the woods, with his weight on her, twigs and thorns and other debris tore at her skin and dirt rubbed in. She didn’t want to go anymore. He smirked, in surprise maybe that she’d made a demand: What are you, a prude? “I am not a prude,” she replied, because that was a thing he didn’t like. He smiled: Prove it. She smiled, too: this was the game, this was her power—her willingness to please him, because Cindy never did. Cindy was not daring; Cindy only wanted to do it in the bed with the lights out at night. Jenna had figured out that doing what he told her to do made him love her. So she bent over his kitchen counter, her face pressed into cracking Formica layered with crumbs, and a pain like a butcher knife up her butt sliced her in half. She wailed. The whole room wailed. He let out an incredulous laugh and she screamed, stop stop stop, which made his fingers dig deep into her hair and his voice overflow with contempt: Shut up, Miss America. You’re beautiful, shut up. She tried, but she couldn’t stop the sounds that shuddered from her chest. So he cupped his hand over her mouth and nose and she gasped in the last of the air. She was suffocating, she would die, she was sure, and her brain went black.

Barefoot, Jenna stomped into the woods. The familiar puncturing of her skin propelled her on. There was plenty of disgusting rot for people like Luanne and her Lucky Winners.

DAY AFTER DAY, JENNA CLIMBED into the Winner Wagon with another lunch bag—a dead sparrow, a squashed squirrel, a chipmunk butt. Weeks passed. Luanne smiled and said nothing. Jenna kept expecting Big D’s voice to come over the phone: “Hey, girls? I just got a weird call from one of our Lucky Winners . . .” but it never came. No one called to report her. Nothing happened. She had no effect. Why? She was powerless, invisible, nonexistent. Stop, stop, stop, don’t leave me.

Composed and pristine at the wheel, Luanne examined her. “Are you all right?” That voice—that Luanne voice—sugary sweet and oozing down like slow syrup. “What’s wrong, Jenna? Jenna?”—oozing down Jenna’s forehead and eyes and nose and mouth until she couldn’t breathe—“Stop!” Jenna gasped. “Stop the van, I’m gonna be sick.”

Luanne swerved onto the roadside and Jenna flung open her door, plopped out, and dry-heaved. She tried wrapping her arms around herself in a hug but it was no use: without Luke’s soothing, her thoughts would burn up her brain.

“Oh, Jenna,” Luanne’s disappointed voice dropped down from above. “Are you hung over? Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Luanne maneuvered the van through the streets of Jenna’s neighborhood, flustered by the potholes. “They ought to repair these streets!” she complained like an adult. Jenna was delivered back to the pit where her parents were, and she entered her house, unexpected. Her father was in the dining room with his fishing magazines. “What’s the matter with you?” he snapped. She pushed through the airless rooms and into her own, shut the door tight, lay down, and covered her ears with a pillow: it didn’t help. She still heard the whoosh of the toxic chemicals filling up her head, drowning her. See, you’re nuts. You and Cindy—he hissed her name—you’re just nuts and you blame me—

“I didn’t mean to blame you,” she said out loud.

He’d complained to Jenna, “Cindy’s a jealous person. She doesn’t trust me. She wants to know where did I go, who did I see. She always thinks I’m going to cheat on her.” By then Jenna was nearly eighteen and didn’t stop herself from saying, “You are cheating on her.” He sprang off the bed and glowered, stood with his whole body hating her. You’re saying it’s my fault? You’re blaming me?

Then he left. After two years, he just left. He was moving to Pennsylvania, he said, with Cindy—he emphasized, taunting her with the name. He and Cindy were buying a house, he and Cindy were starting a family. Jenna watched the moving truck pull up and the movers load boxes and chairs and the bed and she thought she would die. She wanted to die. Why wasn’t she dead? The truck drove off and she did not just want to die. She wanted to chop open her wrists, blow off her head, crash her face through a windshield—anything to escape her boiling body. Month after month, trying to live in the scalded body, trying to walk down the street, sit in a chair. Enrolling in that stupid modeling class so she could feel visible again—and Miss Judi, that stupid bitch, telling her to smile. “It’s important to be cheerful,” Miss Judi admonished and Jenna started to cry—the other girls waiting in a fluffy bunch at the head of the runway—while Jenna cried and said her boyfriend left and Miss Judi clucked, “Oh, come on. Pretty girl like you will have a new boyfriend next week just as good as the last one.”

THE NEXT DAY Jenna was late to work. Luanne was already in the Winner Wagon, window cranked down, singing along with the radio, “And I think to myself, what a wonderful wer-er-erld,” soft and sappy, grateful and sincere. Jenna pulled open the driver’s side door and blurted, “I want to drive today.”

“Oh! Sure!” Luanne was pleased, thinking—what? She’d been a good influence? She slid across the bench seat, folded her hands demurely, turned amicably. Jenna climbed in, wrenched the key in the ignition, and punched the accelerator to the floor. The Winner Wagon leaped forward.

“Oh, hey! Kinda fast!” Luanne said, her voice in a singsong as though she was trying to be helpful. Jenna accelerated across the parking lot and bumped out into traffic without looking. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, what’s wrong, what’s wrong.” Jenna mocked, then shot her a dark look. “What’s the worst thing you can imagine?” Jenna spun the van onto Warwick Boulevard and pretended to aim at the anchor on the Mariner’s Museum lawn. Luanne screamed, helpless and yippy; Jenna couldn’t help but laugh. Here was the power at last—in her hands. The steering wheel, laced up in a cushioned leather cover, whirled to the left. “Wheeeee!” Jenna sang out happily—and she was happy: finally she would be free of herself. She would crash and die and take this insufferable Luanne with her.

“Jenna, Jenna,” Luanne was repeating like a parrot.

“Yes, Luanne Luanne?” Jenna smiled at her.

“You’re going way too fast, you’re going to, to—”

“Kill us both? That’s right, Good-Looker Luanne! I’m gonna flip this fuckin’ Winner Wagon over five hundred times and you and I are going up in flames!” Jenna laughed loud and maniacal, a little like Big D.

Luanne said, “Oh my god I’m going to die in a car accident,” and Jenna was momentarily sorry for her, remembering the brother killed in the graduation night crash. Unconsciously, her foot eased off the accelerator. Then Big D started another tune—a desperate female voice singing, “My world is empty without you, babe”—and Jenna’s foot jammed the pedal down again. She caught glimpses of Luanne, sitting very still, very quiet, and by degrees realized that Luanne’s hand was crawling across the seat toward the CB receiver. Jenna grabbed for it but too late: Luanne got it first. “Big D!” she cried into it, “Help me! Big D!”

Big D’s voice came back singing, “Oh help me Lu-anne, help help me, Lu-anne.”

“Ha!” Jenna grabbed Luanne’s wrist to twist the receiver out of her hand and the van weaved across lanes.

“Watch out!”

“Give me that.” Jenna snatched a handful of Luanne’s hair, dragged her over, and wrenched the receiver from her grip. “Big D!” she yelped into it. “Good-Looker Luanne is racing back to the station to suck your dick!”

Luanne screeched, “That is so foul!” and flailed around for the receiver. Jenna yelled, “Oh my god she’s so horny she wants to suck off the CB!” The Winner Wagon veered across the center line into the oncoming traffic, drifted back again. Big D’s voice could be heard sounding almost normal. “What?”

Luanne gouged the receiver out of Jenna’s hand, yanked its cord from the console, and flung it into the back seat. Jenna seized her wrist and screamed, “You know what? You are the stupidest girl I ever knew!”

“Hey! I am not! I’m a National Merit Scholar!”

Jenna shook Luanne’s hand around. “You think Big D doesn’t go home every night and wank himself off thinking about you?”

“That is so disgusting! Are you nuts?” Luanne gasped, wiggled out of Jenna’s grip and flew back across the seat. “You are nuts. Like your aunt in the mental hospital.”

“That’s right chicky! Just ask anyone and they’ll tell ya—I am one crazy gal!” The van careened into a subdivision. Jenna jerked down her window and whooted at a fat man watering his grass. They tore round and round and flew back out onto the main road.

“Listen,” said Luanne. “I know a very excellent family counselor. I can give you the number right now—”

Suddenly calm, “Oh, can you Luanne? You’d do that—for me?”

Luanne stared, suspicious.

“Okay,” Jenna said, making her voice sound calm. “I’ll try counseling, but only if you promise at our next meeting you’ll suck off Big D.”

“God, what is wrong with you?”

Jenna eased off the accelerator, slowed to the speed limit, and looked at Luanne. “No, Luanne. What is wrong with you? What is it you don’t see?”

Exasperated, “What?”

Jenna set her eyes on the road ahead and said, “I hate you.”

“Why!” Luanne shook her head around, hair flying everywhere. “I’m a nice person!”

Jenna didn’t speak. What people want is to not be bothered and not be blamed. She pictured a silent semi-circle of people—Luanne and Luke, Joe McKenzie and Big D, her mother and father, all the Lookers and all the Lucky Winners—peering at her with mean hard eyes. She was a pile of dirt. She was a clump of earth breaking apart and sliding down the side of a cliff. She was dust settling in the grass, waiting to be stepped on. She just wanted to die. She sped up.

They flew down J. Clyde Morris Boulevard toward the overpass where the road curved. Jenna tightened her hands on the wheel. Luanne was dead silent. When the road curved, Jenna kept the wheel straight, shut her eyes, and heard Luanne scream one more time. The Winner Wagon bumped over the shoulder and down the plush slope. It did not roll over a hundred times and burst into flames. The terrain was too flat. But they went crunching into a large bush, and Luanne bonked her head: “Ow. Damn.”

The engine stalled but the radio kept playing. Big D’s prerecorded voice was going extra fast, doing a disclaimer. Jenna pitched forward and changed the station, and for a moment they sat listening. The DJ on this station called himself Tony Z, and in his contest, you had to call when he said the magic “Z” word, and if you were the nineteenth caller and could name the last nine songs he’d played, your name was entered in a drawing for ninety-nine dollars. Luanne turned off the radio. “Are you all right?”

Tears oozed into Jenna’s eyes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Luanne sighed. “Well, maybe you could get your job back at Pizza Hut.”

Jenna clutched the wheel, kept the tears contained in closed-tight eyes. “You still don’t understand. There’s no love in this. We’re trapped.”

“What are you talking about? No we aren’t.” Luanne popped open her door. Footsteps crunched around the back of the van, and Jenna’s door squealed open. Luanne’s voice was impatient and restrained: “Can you get out? Do you need help?”

Jenna released the wheel and gave Luanne her hand—there was nothing else to do—and Luanne led her through the tall scratchy grasses up the incline toward the road, where people had already gathered to get a look.

“Elodie” by Jennifer Christman

IT’S AROUND THE TIME my mother, formerly Roseclaire, emerges from the lower depths. She’s been living in the basement since I was eight, floating at playroom level. She sleeps in the tiny au pair bed and makes coffee in the tiny au pair kitchen and washes up in the tiny au pair bath. She lives amidst American Girl dolls, feather boas and chunky dress-up shoes, my rocking horse and board games. The delightful environment has an impact on her. She is Happy.

Not the adjective. She’s Happy and making the change legally. Sometimes we need to disavow whole parts of ourselves, she says. Going forward she will only respond to people who call her Happy. She expects everyone to get on board. No one does. She’s not entirely surprised. But she’s deeply disappointed and saddened by the lack of spiritual depth exhibited by humanity. By humanity she refers to three people who still sort of associate with her. Her parents and their cleaning lady.

It’s around the time my guidance counselor asks why I haven’t signed up for a college meeting. He has this patter-you’re so alternative, you should be somewhere alternative, given your alternative nature­- it’s droll. My nature is not alternative. I’m just not thinking about college. I tell him I like history because it’s crap that happened. He thinks I’m a hoot, says alternative more and go somewhere with good history.

You can still call me mum.

I’ve never once called her “mum” because we’re not Brits. We’re not even Protestant. We’re half-Jew/half-RC. I continue to call her mom and chalk mum off to her adjusting to thinner air. I like her better in the basement, catatonic and out of view. Here she is blinky-eyed and stolid, zealous with newfound nondenominational spiritualism.

She has glommed on to a virtual church, Testament of God. She can’t go back to the Jesus mongers at Our Lady. The biddies there don’t talk to her anymore because of her extramarital shenanigans culminating in my father’s departure and her fall from grace. She spends a lot of time on ToG’s site. She has not graduated to know­ing what is going on with me. Take college. My father is going to foot the bill. He lives in Bethesda. That’s always been the plan, the one thing he is going to do-out of guilt for setting up shop and producing a second family in no time. My mother never mentions the C-word. She has forgotten how old I am. I’m a high school senior.

What’s happening at school?

Predictable Memory Lane stuff.

I hope you finally have some good teachers.

That ship has sailed.

I hope they cleared out some of that dead wood.

No one is focused on academics.

What are people doing this summer? 

Nothing. As in the end of high school. What?

I didn’t say anything.

I’m tired of taking my buds out to hear her. I spend half my life with my head and torso pitched over the basement stairs, my ass and legs in the kitchen. I tell her that if she doesn’t want to yell she should consider venturing upstairs for a minute.

I’m thinking about it.

Or obtaining a megaphone. She obtains one. Her shrill mechanical voice cuts through the silence of the house. It’s less depressing than the robotic kazoo voice people have after their voice boxes are removed. But I am forever jolted by squealing feedback preceding her communications.

Any interest in Sculpey Clay?

I’d love a turkey burger.

Exercising for the next thirty minutes.

She is exercising. She’s downright peppy. She constructs a training circuit, a Chutes and Ladders-type set up involving an indoor wooden slide and platform, multicolored jigsaw foam blocks fitted together in a large mat on the floor-for calisthenics. There are hula hoops, my once-coveted  Nickelodeon Moon Shoes, a Skip-It, a kid unicycle and other stuff. She saves the unicycle for the end, after planking and crunching on the mat. She wears knee and wrist pads and a bike helmet. I can tell what part of the circuit she is on at any given time. Clickety-clack = Skip-It, squeaky thuds = moon shoes, exclamations = unicycle as she grabs for the wall.

There’s a pogo stick. Boing-boing. I hear her short sharp breaths. She insists that I watch Reverend John Good, Testament of God’s fearless leader.

His shop needs to invest in a good mic. This guy’s mouth is pressing on it. She has the volume painfully high.

I WANT YOU.

Pointing like Uncle Sam.

See the way he’s pointing at me?

He’s pointing at the camera.

My heart jumped, Elodie.

Because it’s deafening and terrifying.

His short, crumpled black hair is pressed flat to his skull like he irons it. He has small dark eyes, sallow cheeks-Mediterranean-ish skin, could be Indian, could be Latin, Middle Eastern. Accent vaguely southern. Hard to decipher.

No, because I’m alive. Have you noticed my sense of humor is coming back?

It’s around the time I notice her humor receding like the tide in time-lapse.

I REMEMBER OUR GOLDEN PERIOD, when I’m sixteen and spend every day downstairs in the serene colors and cheerful imagery. A jack-in-the-box shoots from the cuckoo clock hourly to “Pop Goes the Weasel.” My mother and I sit at a folding table. I watch while she works with my art kits, markers and crayons, construc­tion paper and scissors, glue sticks. I make myriad variations on a potholder with multicolored cotton loops. She shows her college portfolios. They are stuffed with drawings, fashion sketches and concepts for textiles. Her work is very iconoclastic. Very beware The Oppressor. Very she must have known something about herself.

But these are nice days. She is animated and chatty and wants to get things off her chest. Tell her origin story, how when she is still in college, her parents-aka my grandparents-start worry­ing about her path.

Out of nowhere they foist this upstanding guy on me.

Upstanding guy being my father. It’s hard to imagine frail Roseclaire as bold rebel-vixen, hewing close to the line of eat­ing-disordered, all dark poetry and edgy art.

My personality was heavily curated. Envision Theda Bara. Raccoon eyes and black lipstick.

I learn that at twenty-eight my father is prematurely crusty and lives alone in the suburbs.

He couldn’t wait to be his parents. Belong to the club.

My mother tortures her parents, especially her mother, for be­ing bourgeois. Ooh, a man. She does that funny. The courtship era is uncanny, in relief, her parents caring so much about something she has not thought about.

Like a timer sounding, a roasting bird. ‘She’s ready!’

There is fuzzy outrage at the margins of her story. I imagine her home on a weekend, stretched long on pink shag, tugging at woolen strands, making a bald patch on her kid room carpet. She is quite the comedian telling this chapter, riffing on the names of country clubs-Tumbling Brook and Verdant Hills.

They all sound like mental institutions.

But she tries ridiculously hard to be charming when she meets my father. The timer, the bird done, she keeps saying. I had reached a temperature. She’s extra-creative for their big date-tennis-­ and wears a form-fitting pleated white skirt that goes from ribs to ankles. Clay turns it filthy red. Midriff-revealing T-shirt. Sneak­ers. Mink stole. Choker. Earrings like chandeliers.

I say it takes nerve to wear a get-up like that to a mental institution and she says That’s funny, Elodie. She is not expecting me to have a sense of humor and is pleased and recognizes something of her­ self in me.

I was an odd gazelle, loping around the court.

She galumphs around the room. She is arguably beautiful.

I race upstairs to her jewelry box. I know the earrings and sometimes dangle them under my nonexistent lobes. I bring them to her.

Those are the ones. You can have them.

She shows me her wedding album. She can’t do Catholic, my father can’t do Jewish, so they do Unitarian. They move to Heart­-of-Stone, Connecticut and fit right in. She still lives there, no longer fits in and no longer cares.

She does not trash-talk my father. She blames herself.

I expected Paul expected me to gel somehow, take a shape. He didn’t expect anything. But I pushed against all that inevitability.

Everything was ironic, she says. Even the way she decorates. The vintage eyeball can light, a moderne touch to the sunken liv­ing room, is intentionally like her parents’ house. I was programmed.

I laugh at her robot voice and trance walk.

She describes an emotional paradox, dressing like Doris Day but wanting to be Patti Smith. I’d put you down to nap, close the shades and perform all of Horses under the eyeball. I ask her to show me, upstairs, just this one thing. I want her to come upstairs.

No.

She does not share the sordid details of her downfall. Hear­say is that the contractor responsible for my playroom-cubbies and kiddie stage and make-believe kitchen and oven with real knobs-is the cause of her demise. And there may have been friends’ husbands.

Her prim cronies ghost her. I know these people and their children. The mere whisper of misdeeds pulls them toward each other, magnetic dust. I imagine them in a tight circle, nodding, arms folding and unfolding, eyes to the ground, eyes boring holes in each other.

They refused to acknowledge me, she says of the old gang. She sings “Bye Bye Love” melodramatically and imitates ex-pal Trish’s three faces-wan and languid, scrunched crybaby, Munchian scream. Paige’s horrific accent and mannish timbre. Bronwyn walking-gorilla arms and pigeon toes. Former Roseclaire is funny.

She feels rotten after so much laughing.

Go upstairs, Elodie. I don’t want to talk anymore.

I do not know if she remembers our golden period.

SHE DISCOVERS “I-WITNESS,” ToG’s sermon library, and binges on backlog. All John Good all the time. There’s no way his words don’t ring in her ears. There’s no way his ideas don’t infiltrate her thoughts. From my room I hear the rise and fall of his incantations. There’s no way he doesn’t permeate her being.

Elodie, did you know that we tread the same path as our biblical forbears?

I haven’t thought about it.

My Expulsion caused spiritual bruises. Reverend Good says that looking back with curiosity rather than shame will heal them. He calls it spiritual excavation and cauterization.

I watch some of the sermons. In them, Reverend Good is re­hearsing. He looks down, makes notes, looks up, stumbles on words. My mother probably sees this as proof of his humanity and authenticity, her favorite words these days. And spiritual. And spirituality. And spiritualism. Sometimes he grins crookedly, his eyes darting to the side. Someone is there with him. I think she thinks she is.

The videos are cheese from a production-values standpoint, worse than local access-single, straight on camera,  medium/close shot of the Reverend serving up his wisdom. The camera is too low, the frame capturing his torso, shoulders, neck and face, his crown severed. Colors are muted and the focus is off. If he were not so prone to flashing smiles at odd junctures, he would resemble a sweaty missionary pleading for his life from a war-torn region. At a podium.

I set up her first-ever electronic handle-she’s meeknmild@gmail, password chlld0fG0d-so that she can write to John Good. She composes more words to revredeemer@testgod.net in a day than she broadcasts up to me in a month. I read their emails when she is in the tub.

DEAR ROSECLAIRE,

I AM SORRY THAT YOU LIVE IN THE BASEMENT. I AM GLAD TO KNOW YOU ARE WATCHING “I–WITNESS” AND THAT IT IS OF COMFORT TO YOU.

BOUNTIFUL BLESSINGS, REV. JOHN GOOD

Dear Reverend Good,

I did some things that upset people. No one talks to me at my old church.

Most sincerely, Roseclaire

ROSECLAIRE,

A CHURCH THAT DOES NOT WELCOME A CONGREGANT MIGHT CALL ITSELF “CHURCH” BUT IT IS NOT A HOUSE OF THE LORD.

BOUNTIFUL BLESSINGS, REV. JOHN GOOD

Dear Reverend,

I mean to say I am not innocent.

Sincerely, Roseclaire

ROSECLAIRE,

NO ONE IS INNOCENT.

BOUNTIFUL BLESSINGS, REV JG

THIS IS THE TENOR. Time unfolds.

Reverend,

Recently I have come to see that my former, overplayed and no longer serviceable self needs to be ousted. Or maybe surgically removed, I’m not sure of the metaphor. Having my old self gone would allow my new, more positive self to claim its rightful position. Is it dramatic to say I want my old self dead?

Eternally thankful for your guidance, Roseclaire

ROSECLAIRE,

YOUR WORDS HAVE PROMPTED MY LATEST SERMON, ”AP­PROPRIATE YOURSELF!” IT SPEAKS TO THE CRITICALITY OF EMBRACING A NEW SELF, OR FORMER SELF LOST IN THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE. BE YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF. BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. TO DO OTHERWISE IS TO GO FALSE.

GOD’S LOVE, RJG

My mother plays and replays the harangue she has inspired. She bathes and blathers for extended periods.

Elodie, I’m reconstituting. Like a compressed sponge. Remember the capsules that puff in to animals?

I could answer. I could not answer. She’s not talking to me. She needs a sticky spot for her utterances while the Reverend blasts over laptop speakers: FALSENESS IS A TERRIBLE FATE.

He’s about to give away the secret.

I have heard this two-hundred times. It’s not a secret anymore.

THERE’S A SECRET I’LL LET YOU IN ON. BUT FIRST YOU MUST RESET YOUR SPIRITUAL MACHINERY TO CHANGE YOUR SPIRITUAL OUTPUT. IT TAKES A SIMPLE PUSH OF THE  COGNITIVE–SPIRITUAL BUTTON.

Herewith the secret:

YOU CAN APPROPRIATE A NEW SELF. THE SELF YOU LOST, HAVEN’T BEEN, COULDN’T BE, REFUSED TO BE–

Who doesn’t know this?

And when she isn’t playing it she’s proclaiming bits and pieces with her mouthpiece, sometimes in call and response. Don’t go false–I have only ever gone false! The cognitive–spiritual button­-I will push that button!

The trumpeting is jarring even with the basement door closed.

I love this part. Watch this.

I will not. I know what happens. At the end of his rant, Good says YOU WILL BE HAPPY. Then he has a better thought, writes it down and restates: GOD’S WILL IS FOR YOU TO BE HAPPY. He breaks character, looks up squinting and says I LIKE THAT, LET’S GO WITH THAT.

Elodie, you’ve got to see this.

You would think she is watching recently discovered outtakes ofJohn Lennon or someone important. I re-close the door.

Later she blows her horn: Epiphany!

Having one!

Come down!

Elodie!

I tell her to come to the bottom of the steps. She does, holding my ancient Magic 8-Ball.

Am I Happy? She shakes the ball. Signs point to yes! She looks up at me.

I’m ready to come upstairs.

IT SHOULD BE TRUE that motivation, wherever it comes from or leads to, is better than no motivation. But I dread her re-ascent. I imagine her navigating the space shakily, awestruck, like E.T. or Rip Van Winkle. But her arrival is anticlimactic. She walks into rooms, glances around, unimpressed, as if a parallel version of herself has been here all along and grown bored. She throws out a ton of crap- clothes and shoes, desiccated eye pencils and hard lipsticks, formerly beloved objects.

The things I cared about.

Many decorative pillows form a pyramid at curbside.

Such superficial concerns.

I do not remember the pre-descent era- shit hitting the fan, drawers slamming, feverish shushing or other signs of domestic cataclysm. I vaguely remember my grandparents around, my grandfather on the phone, waving me out of the study. He and my grandmother cut a deal with my father by buying the house so that their daughter can stay in it with me. Except for college, they will pay for everything. They are sorry. They sold my father a lemon.

Happy is surprised to find that I sleep in a room off the kitchen and have for several years. It is scary to be on the second floor alone. She is also horrified by the way I keep my little squalor palace, piles of DVDs an obstacle course on the floor. They may look disorganized but I know the location of every title. My room is cozy. I refuse to let her touch or move anything. She is put off by my ferocity and something else: that I have actual habits and preferences. It is unclear what she thinks I have been doing all this time.

She wants to renew her license in order to attend ToG in  person. I refuse her a lift to the DMV. Not because I am getting ready to graduate, though I am. She calls a taxi.

You’re very selfish, Elodie.

In no time she is back behind the wheel and speeds off to ToG, spending an inordinate amount of time there- Sundays at first as an attendee, then volunteering on weekdays, then evenings. She talks about the place breathlessly, and about him, John Good. Every­ thing he says is of critical importance. Like Moses he bears a powerful message. He feels deeply.

Happy is a child-tyrant, veering between two modes: ecstatically chipper and darkly apocalyptic. Anything ToG ignites marvel and wonder in her, like a carnival- the Tilt-A-Whirl, ahooga-ahooga horns, atomic fireballs. Alternatively she is grave and categorical. Living in- trying to get me to live in- her narrow universe. She starts conversations chipper, vibrating with enthusiasm.

I hope you will meet Father Good soon.

Why should I meet him?

You don’t want to meet Father Good?

Why should I meet him?

He’d like to meet you.

I don’t want to meet him.

She leaves the room and reappears a minute later.

The Devil has a way of tricking us.

I’m eighteen. The Devil has never been a topic of conversation in our house.

The devil tricks us into thinking that if we allow a better, stronger man into our lives it is somehow wrong because it will be hurtful to our father.

I do not know if she is talking about my father or her father or Our Father or so-called father Good.

Elodie, your father abandoned you.

My father abandons her for screwing the shelf builder. When her town-crier biddies find out, my father leaves and I am left in the process. As the result of her shenanigans. I say just that last part.

You have a lot of spiritual homework to do, Elodie.

Because I don’t want to meet Johnny B. Goode?

Leave this room.

Silent violent storm cloud arrives. The Whip grinds to a halt. Antique cars file solemnly off the lot. Babies howl.

Happy’s new way of disapproving gives me palpitations. I’m used to her passivity and out-of-it-ness. I try a new tack, no idea where it comes from: I brighten up my never-brightened face and explain that I’m not religious. I say this in an understand-me tone, which softens her. Slightly.

You need spiritual guidance. You’re vulnerable and afraid. You hide from the world. You live in that hovel and watch movies.

I say nothing about her lengthy stay in Candyland.

Time passes. I take a different tack. Get a wispy tattoo on the back of my neck.

Elodie, you are not Jewish.

What do you mean?

Elodie, you know that is a Jewish star. You are Unitarian. And you look like a convict.

I went to Unitarian nursery school. Technically I’m Jewish since you’re Jewish.

Happy casts her end of days look.

AT COLLEGE I BECOME a cave-dwelling ogre girl. Also a non-washer of hair, non-brusher of teeth, pimple squeezer and owner of no more than three shirts. I like the freedom that comes with abandoning hygiene. But I am not a fan of frequent palpitations and acid reflux- the latter especially because it hurts to swallow anything, including my own saliva. I carry a cup for spitting. I’m not super social.

But I find Wolf’s Den, the film people house. It’s a throwback, a cottage with flea-infested couches. There’s a torn pull-down screen and a TV with tubes inside. An actual alum, Wolf, who is around sixty, started this place. He donates money to keep the building from being razed. It’s a haven for those of us onto the fact that there’s nothing to do in Bleaksville, New York. I stumble in one night because the ceiling fixture in my room is making things oblong and I realize if things suck this much when I’m twenty-one I can always off myself. That thought prompts me to experience my remaining time outside of the dorm.

Inside is empty and dead quiet. Dreyer’s Joan of Arc is playing­ not to get all Ouija board but someone is expecting me to wander in- subtitles and no music, the way it should be seen. Except that it’s a flickering VHS on the boxy TV. Lynch and Tarantino would mark this offense with a murder-suicide, but this is what I en­counter and I don’t know any better, so I curl up and watch. I don’t know the story but I know its steep-angled world. I know its bullies and hypocrites and cretins. I know the androgynous soul with her bowl cut. I know her strangeness and terror and steadfast­ness. I watch this many nights, many times.

Happy calls occasionally and talks in a hushed, purposeful tone. The Reverend and I have grown quite close. I hack her gmail sometimes, to keep tabs on her, on them, but close out forever after seeing YOUR PURPLE SUCCULENCE in a subject line. On a weekend home I meet Him. The real Reverend is sitting at our kitchen table eating a frozen pupusa and wearing my Blue’s Clues slippers.

YOUR ANGER IS CORROSIVE is his main message to me, smiling and blinking. YOU’RE CHIPPING AWAY AT HER FOUNDATION. He talks like a baby and makes micro-hatchet chops in the air with the blade of his hand, barely moving his forearm, barely parting his lips and teeth to speak.

I sleep in the basement. She never goes there anymore. Hatchet boy prefers the big bedroom. I sift through her tub-time sketches from last year. His moony face resembles a topographical map, on other pages are close-ups of his features-crimped hair, pocked cheek, iris and pupil.

His intentions are only benign. SHE NEEDS TO SHORE UP HER SPIRITUAL SCAFFOLDING. He likes architectural metaphors. Meanwhile she wafts around in a white turban. Not as in post­ hair washing. As in gold medallion affixed at her forehead. As in ashen guru. Her face is serene and severe in equal measure. Cancels to blankness. SHE WANTS TO BECOME A DEACONESS.

Come summer, I avoid Connecticut and work as a ticket taker and concessions “associate” at a botched carve-up job of a theater. Not properly gutted and plexed, it’s a former single screen that some enterprising idiot with no concept of sight lines has portioned into awkward spaces by erecting cheesy walls. I lurk around the booth and sidle up to the projectionists. One shows me stuff. The place is switching to digital sometime in the coming year, he tells me. Everything’s going DCP. His job will get boring. We talk about the degradation of the image and the viewing experience-the flattening that comes with digital, like administering lithium to a perfectly coherent and vivid 35mm. In the meantime I learn the ins and outs of their Kineton and platter, an increasingly despised system that has merits. People tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That job and the Den give me a focus, but sometimes I don’t feel solid. On an especially drifty night, I pay a visit to one of the campus mental people.

Would you say it’s an out of body experience?

I would not say that. I’m in the mental office. My body isn’t the problem. I just say things seem vast when I walk around. The word “vast” reverberates.

Have you been diagnosed with agoraphobia?

I pinch my thighs and pull my elbows in tight. Not recently, I say.

Do you have an eating disorder?

I eat from vending machines. The dining hall lighting is de­pressing.

Do you have panic disorder?

The guy’s lopsided beard annoys me and being annoyed feels better. At least I’m not unhinged. Happy is unhinged. Happy is unassembled. Happy is a heap. All Happy says is I’m praying for you.

Let’s keep chatting, he says.

Sure thing, I say.

I try not to notice the quiet. Like there’s cotton in my ears. I start to hum when I walk around outside or when I’m in my room. And when I’m not in class I’m in the Den. I sleep there and get a lot of work done on the shredded corduroy couch in the back corner. I’m not talking to a ton of people but what can another person say that a film can’t say less annoyingly?

Watching Salesman, a viriti-style doc about an agnostic chain-smoking door-to-door bible seller, I realize that any man­ Dr. Jekyll, David Koresh, Father Christmas-could show up and tap-tap-tap on Happy’s brass knocker and she would let him in and buy whatever BS he is selling. It’s pathetic to have instinctual trust and belief in a person- worse, to have a craven need for such a person. Kids need to be this way to survive. I feel bad for kids. I decide never to have kids. Films tell me everything I need to know.

I managed to do okay in my major, which turns out not to be history because, lo, there’s this whole subject called cinema studies. Four years watching a shit ton of movies. By which I mean love.

WOLF, AGED HIPPY of Den fame, helps me get the gig at The Jewel, a single-screen near NYC. He knows the owner, a guy, Val. I’m interested because where can a person find a single-screen nowadays. I find a place in the city since there aren’t many young people in the town. Not that I think of myself as a young person. And not that I plan to talk to anyone because I’ll be sole projectionist, which means endless alone-time, aka some things never change.

The derelict I take over for is sitting at concessions while the film is running, playing with his phone, bored out of his mind. This would not be my practice. Six people are watching the POS film he has thrown onto the screen. He shows me the projector and sound system. We take the snaking stairs and he complains how hot it is, how there is no air. Obviously there is no air. Nine­teen-twenties movie houses are built for nitrate stock. In the event of overheating film, the projectionist closes the fire shutter immediately, it falls like a guillotine, separating the booth from the house. Patrons escape while everything in proximity to the exploding film, projectionist included, perishes.

I meet Val, “President & CEO.” He expects me to run the house, concessions and booth- build prints, run shows, break down, clean, oil and make repairs to a last-of-breed platter and projector- and curate. I am meticulous with my responsibilities so that he has few reasons to stop by.

I make the place my own and spend a lot of time in the booth, even the thickest summer nights. The heat leaves my body and settles at the edges of the floor, mingling with dust balls. When I get my hands on a classic I do a one-off screening for film people. The sandwich man at Craptown Deli is legit and there are others. They are not to be confused with movie people who ruin the ex­perience by coming in late, talking, carrying picnics, laughing in­appropriately. I tell them to be quiet or leave. As in when I put up The Searchers and Scar appears for the first time-John Wayne’s alter ego-and a moron guffaws.

His hair, his face paint. So fake.

And when a mother says to her little girl the little girl will be all right. Nothing happens to the family.

I have a moral obligation to set her straight. Something happens to the family. On the bright side, Debbie, aka Natalie Wood, doesn’t get mutilated like her mother and sister. She only gets violated.

The mother looks at me in horror like Happy would. Happy would say your scorn for mankind is vast.

Fine, don’t find out that Scar makes Debbie his squaw, that honor-driven Ethan Edwards wants to kill her-when, at long last, he finds her. Don’t realize that you will care about him and wish him dead with equal intensity. Just know that these films are intended for the cinematically curious. They’re not for killing time because you can’t think of a constructive activity for your kid. There’s the door.

Same sort of thing happens when I scare up a print of African Queen. During the tender gruesome leech scene, when life is being sucked from Humphrey Bogart. He is pushing himself beyond any normal limit-for love and humanity and to thwart the Germans. I hear ewwww and gross and OMG. I have no problem ejecting these people.

Worst are Teen Fridays, when that set comes out of the wood­ work to escape their oppressive parents. A lot of coming and going through the side exits, girls crying in the bathroom, toi­lets clogged, alley strewn with not-water bottles and cigarettes. Someone has to keep tabs on these pod people, so I wander the house. Likewise, Cheap-Geezer Wednesdays-ten bucks for the picture, as these patrons say, small coke and a candy. They like to converse-back when we went to the pictures-and complain be­cause I only stock Duds and Dots. A chocolate thing and a fruit thing. Is it my fault some people have no teeth? I bundle piddling cash with the patience of Job- un-crumpling the fives and ones the oldsters pay with. Val insists on making deposits, which I’m sure he pockets.

He constantly threatens to close. Our margin is nil, our margin is nil.

I tell him we’re creating a film culture.

You should pay me. All you do is watch movies and eat popcorn.

I do not follow his instructions for popcorn: triple the flavacol to make customers thirsty. I consider my work sacred, on par with health professions.

You’re a dinosaur, Elodie.

This is supposed to be an insult.

And you need to be friendlier. You’re a misanthrope.

I can’t believe he knows that word. But I’m an altruist. One-hundred percent I would immolate.

And you’re a tyrant. No wrappers, no texting. You kept a girl from using the bathroom. Her father complained.

During L’Enfant Sauvage. Truffaut-playing the doctor-observes Victor in the deaf-mute asylum, proves that the wild boy can hear clear as a bell and decides to take him home to educate him. When they arrive in the countryside, this cipher saunters out to the lobby. You see hope and possibility-Victor is finally going to be socialized. But he’s being shepherded and prodded along. He doesn’t walk upright or straight. He scampers. Children gawk and run around the circus freak animal-boy. In this scene you realize, not wanting to realize, that he will never be normal.

Don’t come to my shop and miss the essence of things.

This isn’t a library.

It’s a church.

THE LIVING BEING I spend the most time with is a four-pound dog that belongs to the old lady I rent from. When I first meet her, she asks if I have a guarantor for the rent.

Like all these other scions. She gestures dramatically when she speaks.

She means to say this local universe of spoiled children. I get that with the sprawling sweep of her hand. Every part of her is expressive-mouth, eyes, giant ears, features that, taken apart, are monstrous. But the totality of her appearance is magnificent. She is tall for a some-number-generian, pterodactyl-ish, with long bones, knobby elbows, knuckles and ankles. I’m on the short side and have to look up at her. Like crane my neck.

I tell her I would have been an heiress but for a simple twist of fate.

Well that’s the best kind of heiress.

Her sagging Queen Anne is not fancy enough for a scion but I am polite. I need to negotiate. You’re hired on a trial basis is Val’s excuse for fraudulent pay practices. I ask Old Lady if there is work to be done around her brownstone-chores, errands, garbage, recycling, shoveling. I need the rent to be low.

How low?

Quite low.

How quite low? Her eyebrows lift to the ceiling of her soaring parlor.

She lives on this floor and the one above. It’s elegant and mildly crumbling. Along the street-facing wall, thick burgundy fabric is the mantle for a mighty trio of windows. The brocade swags ornately at top and cascades to the floor on each side, landing in a dusty whorl. I spy Peanut, a well-named dog, scooched next to one of the heaps. She eyes me warily. Her minute front paws touch the fringe of a colossal silk rug. Teal and celadon. Fancy in its day.

You’re admiring the Anatolian. It was my grandmother’s.

Jesus. Her grandmother’s. I say it’s like an ocean.

There are more than a few photographs of Old Lady tricked out in sultry gowns. At the Tonys and Obies and swank dinners. In more than one she’s accepting an award. There are framed Playbills and reviews. I have no idea about theater. Except for the classic adaptations. His Girl Friday, masterpiece based on The Front Page, is in my top ten.

“I was not meant for movies.” She touches her face when she speaks and points a long finger at the wall of fame.

“That was a barest-ever bones production of The Wild Duck, only a wooden platform. I tried my hand directing in Williamstown­ one of my very favorite Ibsens. The truth-telling interloper rents a room in a family’s home and destroys them by revealing the lies they’ve told each other. Lies that afforded them happiness and therefore survival.”

I promise never to tell her the truth. She appreciates my sense of humor.

“We cannot make it through life without pretending.” She gestures. “That’s Edward, a dear friend.” In one she is very young, bathed in a spotlight on an otherwise dark stage, like Roseclaire playing Patti. “My Brechtian phase,” Old Lady sighs. “Here is Mike, Maureen, Zoe at the opening of Three Tall Women. Wonderful.”

Wonderful. She rents the entire top floor but I need a fourth of it. Mattress, couple of crates, a lamp, and the bathroom. I ask if she will consider a quarter of the rent.

“Do you mean to tie a string and cordon yourself off?”

I can. Or put down tape.

“A grim crime scene?”

I’m saying I won’t set foot outside my area.

“That’s very odd. No.”

Do you have a basement?

“It’s a hovel,” she says.

I’ll take it, I say.

We have a deal. Basement- and I will deal with trash, return the bins, separate recycling.

“And other chores on an ad hoc basis.”

Fine, other chores. She mostly needs me to walk Peanut at night. The stairs down to the sidewalk are steep, the lighting isn’t great. Peanut is a swell dog.

Old Lady sounds educated and aristocratic. I don’t know if that’s natural or the result of declaiming splendid lines her whole life. She asks about my family and I tell her my father moved to Maryland when I was eight and my mother lives in Connecticut but we’re estranged. I say that word for the first time because it seems applicable and signals don’t ask. When I speak the word it seems to be coming from somewhere else. I am reverberating.

“Estranged”-Old Lady repeats-“is just like it sounds.”

Then she says, “I know about estranged.”

But she doesn’t know about Happy and her bullhorn. About Happy jumping in my moon shoes. About her not speaking to me unless it’s to say The Reverend and I are praying for you. About her calling him The Reverend. And about him saying that my rage is destructive and that I don’t want them to be together be­ cause I have a SPIRITUAL DEFICIT.

I just nod at Old Lady like cool. Then I get reflux and have no place to spit and it can be a day before my chest feels normal again if I swallow but I swallow.

I WALK PEANUT when I get home, no matter the time. She has a weak bladder and is a night owl. When I bring her upstairs, Old Lady is asleep, perfectly straight, flat on her back, hands crossed on her sternum. Her breath is even and slow. Illuminated by light from the hall, her head is outsized. A satin sleep mask rises over and down her mountainous cheekbones and does not hide the bony ledge where her eyebrows rest. Even when slack, her mouth forms a smile. Saturdays are especially late but Peanut waits, coiled tight in the vestibule. She mews when I unlock the big front door. After we walk, I take her downstairs with me so as not to disturb Old Lady.

I hold her up to my bathroom mirror. She would not be Happy’s idea of a dog aesthetics-wise. That’s okay, I tell Peanut, I’m not her idea of a girl aesthetics-wise. I imagine Happy inside the mirror, scanning my topography and stopping at loathsome markers-­ hair, skin, teeth, gunky nail beds. I imagine her saying those pimples, Elodie. I scowl.

I get in my share of real altercations. With Val. With Carlton, SOB projection parts price-gouger and seller of defective sprock­ets. Even cinephile deli-man, when he says the usual? When is it not roast beef, roll, light ranch, BBQ chips and black coffee? I don’t inspire deep affection in people. Except Peanut. I bring her to the booth on slow days. I pinch meat from my sandwich and roll it into microscopic balls for her.

She is mesmerized by the operation: film pulling away from reel, glinting, shimmying, ascending through guides and rollers, traversing overhead as a laundry line. It’s a perfect system from pay-out to take-up, the Cinemeccanica pulling the strip down, guiding it into the gate, holding it taut as it passes frame by tiny frame before the lamp house, where light hits film hits screen and magic is made in the darkened theater. Crunchy. Wondrous. Crackling. Fan whooshing. Motor humming.

I don’t know if Peanut appreciates beauty, truth, or mechanical complexity but she appreciates my quiet careful work. She is calm in the hallowed grotto of rusty reels, cockroach-hued shards, blades, stuck flecks of marking tape, dried dregs in chewed styrofoam cups. She smiles, sensing the miraculousness of it all. She is toothless. Her slip of a tongue hangs from the side of her mouth and makes her appear unabashed. I feel for her, laid bare like that.

Old Lady cooks dinner on Mondays. I buy her ingredients in the morning and go to work late. She tells me about auditioning while still in high school and never telling a soul her dream of becoming an actor. No one would have believed her, she says, be­cause she is gangly. Acting is all she thinks about and she is very studious. “The readiness is all,” she quotes, and tells about taking the bus to read for parts, inventing methods to calm her nerves. She imagines her fellow passengers are on the way to the same au­dition and that they are nervous. When one of them disembarks, it is on account of nerves. “Fear is a formidable foe, Elodie.” Old Lady looks at the remaining riders while saying lines to herself, imagining how they might speak them. This helps her contemplate different intonations and motivations- “a range of personae” to inhabit.

“In some way, too, by inventing a cohort, I felt less miserably alone.”

I can relate, Old Lady.

“The theater was my religion.” The Theater. She says that stirringly and calls the script “the Scripture.” Her eyes sparkle when she talks about her directors. “They were my gods. I watched their every move, wrote down their every word. They thought my perfor­mances were for them. I knew better. My duty was to the audience.” She is very discreet. “I had wonderful friendships,” she says, cov­ering Peanut’s ears with a cupped palm. “Peanut believes that I have only ever loved her.” She laughs. “But I stayed single. My work came first. I protected it fiercely.”

Peanut is ever on the lookout for falling tidbits. Old Lady gives her some of whatever we eat, usually a classic beef stew. “You must learn to cook, Elodie.” She mashes a carrot with the back of a spoon and gives it to Peanut.

I tell Old Lady about my plan: another year at The Jewel unless Val tears out the seats to hold cockfights. At which point I might try for a festival job. She thinks this is a fantastic idea and offers to keep the downstairs room for me so I don’t have to carry crates to parts unknown. In the meantime, she suggests I screen one­ offs in the attic. “Wouldn’t that be glorious!” I have a projector from my Bleaksville days. She says to use the long white wall up there. “Start a salon!” She loves this notion and I feel a glimmer of euphoria, an atomic fireball finding the crook of my jaw.

When she asks about my mother, I say she is on a journey of self-discovery following a religious revelation and epiphany.

“A complicated character.” Old Lady stirs egg noodles in boiling water. “Is she petite like you?”

I say we have the same hair but she is taller.

“Willowy?”

She is willowy.

“Roseclaire. What a lovely compound. English or French, I imagine.”

She is named after her Polish great-grandmother.

Old Lady thinks this is priceless. She chortles and holds a hand to her mouth for politeness, feigning horror at her mirth. Her eye­ brows hoist like sails and her face widens. She gets very serious and reaches for a colander.

“The most important thing I learned as an actor was to embody a character fully. To enjoy inhabiting her. To revel in her. To do that you must find a way to love that character. Even if there is much not to love. Find one thing to cherish.”

I feel you, Old Lady. For some reason I don’t have a pain in my chest. I scoop up Peanut and whisper in her minuscule ear:

“She was funny. She made me laugh.”