Penni Jones - Suicide Souls

A woman walks in with a kid on her hip. She’s thin and cute, but with deep circles under her eyes. Her bleached hair is pulled into a loose ponytail.

I try to imagine her with Luke. It’s easier than I thought.

“Hey, sweetie. When did you get home?” She kisses the boy on top of the head and puts the toddler on the floor.

“I just got here.” He gulps his chocolate milk and wipes his mouth the back of his hand.

Luke stares at her. Daisy, the last girl he penetrated.

The resident dog, some sort of terrier mix with coarse-looking fur and a bent ear, locks his beady eyes on me and snarls.

“Bojangles!” Daisy says, “You calm down now!”

“Let’s get started,” I say. “Put out your scent or something. This might not take much effort.”

The dog wanders over to us. He’s inches from my face, staring and panting. I’m glad I can’t smell him, because he definitely stinks.

Luke shakes his head. “No. Let’s wait until she’s alone.”

“Not to be insensitive or anything, but we might not have much time to spare.” I put my hand on his shoulder. He seemed to respond well to that the last time.

“The Shadow isn’t here,” he whispers even though they can’t hear us if we shout. “I haven’t seen it since my parent’s house.”

“You saw it?” I draw my hand away.

He nods and says, “Let’s just wait until the kids are in bed or something. They don’t need to see their mother cry.”

“Were you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Selfless to the point of being a pussy.” I don’t mean for it to sound so insulting. I really need to start thinking about words before I say them. That’s a lesson for my next go around, right?

“No. I killed myself, remember? That’s pretty selfish.”

Daisy looks around the room, and for a second I think she sees us. But she shakes her head and turns back to the boy.

“You need a shower, Eben.”

“Eben? Is that short for Ebenezer?” Some people give their kids the dumbest names.

“I don’t know.” He’s staring. Just staring like a big dumb idiot.

Daisy’s a mother. The sweet, cute, pot-smoking angel of my backseat is a mother.

It’s not a surprise, I suppose. A lot of girls around here become mothers straight out of high school. So at least she waited a few years. And this is what she wanted from life. She told me so.

What if I had wanted it, too? What if I could have been content to settle down with Daisy and begin a new life independent of my family drama?

But I didn’t want that. I wanted to be a rock star, a writer, a poet who screamed from hotel balconies. I wanted to turn my pain into beauty, but I didn’t know how. And I didn’t want to be anything I could be in Brownsville, Missouri.

“What else do you think Edgar is keeping from us?” Naomi is perched on a wooden stool that is only a round seat and three legs. Bojangles is sitting at her feet, his eyes locked on her face.

“Everything.”

Daisy has the freezer door open. It’s a tiny freezer, but she can’t find what she’s looking for.

“Stew meat, stew meat. I know it’s in here,” Daisy says to herself.

This girl, this little beauty. The last time I saw her, her tits were bouncing in my face and her mouth tasted like Strawberry Hill. And now she’s searching for stew meat.

Maybe it was a natural progression.

“Do you think he gets extra points if we figure shit out for ourselves?” Naomi doesn’t seem to notice the great stew meat search.

“Maybe. Or maybe he just likes fucking with us, and he let it go too far.”

“Apparently it’s important for us to learn a lesson with this shit.” She pretends to kick the dog and he responds with a low, quiet growl.

Daisy finds the stew meat with a triumphant “Aha!” and pulls it out of the freezer. She’s smiling, like that was the best thing that ever happened to her. Daisy was always like that, happy about the little things. That’s why she’s still alive and I’m not.

This could have been my life. I could work at the air conditioner factory down the road, screwing parts into other parts all day. Then come home to this trailer and to my family. My kids, who would look at me like their own personal god. Daisy and I would fall into bed every night, exhausted and beat up from the day. Sometimes we’d have the energy to have sex, but usually we wouldn’t.

What is life other than a series of routines that change and rotate according to circumstances?

Bojangles is tired of Naomi’s teasing. He barks loud enough to rattle the plastic on the windows.

“Bojangles! What has gotten into you?” Daisy grabs him by the collar and leads him to the front door.

Eben rounds the corner. He’s wrapped in a towel. She puts the dog outside and leans down and inhales at the top of her son’s head. “Much better, baby.”

“I hope Edgar will tell us how to find vapid bodies. I haven’t noticed any signs for that sort of thing yet.” Naomi looks to the toddler on the floor. “I think that one’s eating a bug.”

We’re waiting for Daisy’s kids to go to bed. And watching her do things. Mundane things like cut up a hot dog for the little one.

I can’t believe that not being mother material bothered me so much. This looks awful. She talks in a sing-song voice, there are cartoons on the TV, juice boxes dripping on the countertop.

Luke still stares at her, though. Even though she’s the type of person who puts her dog outside with no leash so he can run around a trailer park and nip at other people’s children. A dog that she named fucking Bojangles.

When I visited Jamie, I probably stared like that even though I dumped him, not the other way around. I don’t remember exactly why I did it. Maybe because I needed a break but didn’t know how to ask for one. We almost got back together but he found out that I slept with his best friend after we broke up.

Damaged goods. Whore of Babylon. I heard it all from my loving parents years before that. He only confirmed their early opinion of me.

People will love you unconditionally as long as you do what they want. As long as they don’t really know you.

The greatest of these is love. Until it’s not.

Luke doesn’t know Daisy now. His eyes study her like he really wants to. But it’s too late. She probably wanted to save him, to make him happy and complete. She probably poked holes in the condoms with her earring posts.

But what do I know?

“What’s her last name?” It’s weird to invade someone’s privacy like this without knowing their last name.

“Moore. At least it used to be.”

Daisy turns the TV channel for her rug rats. I haven’t had my choice in TV this entire year. Edgar told us how to bend it to our wills if we need to for the sake of memories. If he had told me earlier, I wouldn’t be so behind on General Hospital .

Now there’s a commercial for diapers. A kid running around with his butt sagging. The idea of a diaper with a full load. But they’re not showing the shit.

I studied marketing extensively. But I only made it to print advertising before swallowing all that Xanax. Print advertising for a local glossy mag is only one-step up from typesetting classifieds in the Penny Saver. But I was really good at it, and it was fun.

Lots of drunk lunches, Adderall afternoon snacks, and ridiculous commissions to get a local jeweler to sign a long-term contract. I only had to appear in the office in short bursts. I’d pop in, wearing a cute suit with a short skirt, drop a fresh pile of contracts on my boss’ desk and smile like I’d just won the spelling bee.