Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen

“I’m meeting a friend.”

“What friend? What for?”

“We’re going to the movies.”

He squinted and snorted and rubbed his chin and leered at me, up and down. “That’s what you wear on a date?”

“I’m meeting my girlfriend,” I told him, “Suzie.”

“What’s wrong with your sister? Take her to the movies, why don’t you?” He gestured widely with his skinny arm and the blanket fell away. He winced, as though the cold at his back were a knife stabbing him.

“Joanie couldn’t come.” Lies like this one were common. He never knew the difference. I turned the knob and opened the front door, looked up at those icicles. If I plucked one, I thought, maybe I could throw it at my father, aim for his head, hit him dead between his eyes.

“That’s right,” he said, “because your sister has a life of her own. She’s made something of herself. Not a hanger-on like you, Eileen.” He bent stiffly at the waist to pick up the blanket. I watched from down the hall and through the kitchen doorway as he struggled to tie the belt of his robe with his shaky hands, adjust the blanket, wobble back to his chair with a new bottle of gin in his hand. “Get a life, Eileen,” he said. “Get a clue.”

He knew how to hurt me. I understood, nevertheless, that he was a drunk, that whatever cruel words he had for me were the nonsensical mumblings of a man who had lost his mind. He was convinced he’d need witness protection from all the work he had done “pinning down the mob.” He seemed to think of himself as some kind of imprisoned vigilante, a saint forced to contend with evil from the confines of his cold abode. The shadowy pranks of those ghostly hoodlums, he complained, tormented him even in his dreams. I tried to reason with him. “It’s in your mind,” I said. “Nobody’s out to get you.” He’d scoff and pat my head like a small child’s. We were both a bit crazy, I suppose. Of course there was no mob in X-ville. In any case, my father had hardly done more as a cop there than pull a car over for a broken taillight. He was terribly confused.

Soon after my father retired, the chief of police took his license away. He’d been caught driving in the wrong direction on the freeway one night, and parked his car in the public cemetery the next. So he stayed at home. On foot, he was nearly as menacing. He’d wander outside in a blackout, knock on neighbors’ doors to perform invented investigatory searches, pull his gun out at shadows, lie down in the gutter or in the middle of the road. Cops dropped him off quietly at the house with a pat on the back, and one of them would scold me for letting him get so out of hand, always with an apologetic sigh, sure, but it still filled me with spite. Once, after a good six-day absence, a bender of greater proportions than I had ever seen my father go on, I got a call from a hospital two counties over and drove out there to pick him up. That persuaded me to gather up all his shoes and keep them locked in the trunk of the car from then on. He did stay indoors for the most part after that, at least in the winter. I wore the car key like a pendant around my neck. I remember the weight of it dangling there between my measly bosoms, thudding around, sticking to my hard and sweaty breastplate, scraping against my skin as I walked out the door.

Before I go on describing the events of that Saturday, I should mention the gun again. When I was growing up, my father would sit at the kitchen table after dinner and clean it, explain all of its mechanics and the necessity of its upkeep. “If you don’t do this and that”—I don’t recall his exact words—“the gun will misfire. It could kill someone.” He seemed to tell me this not as a way of inviting me into this intimate procedure, his life and work, but as a warning, to say that what he had to do was so important, sacred in fact, that if I should ever distract him, or if I should ever touch his gun, God forbid, I would die. I tell you this simply to put the gun into the scenery. It was there, from childhood until the end. It frightened me the way a butcher knife would frighten me, but that was all.

Outside, the yard was filled with exhaust and windblown snow and already dwindling sunlight. I got in the Dodge and drove toward Randy’s, biting my chapped lip in anticipation of catching a glimpse of him through his bedroom window — he didn’t have curtains either — or, better yet, on his way out, so I could follow him secretly through the X-ville streets, led by the heavenly roar of his motorcycle engine. Then I could imagine what he did when he was not at home. If there was a woman in his life, I would know, once and for all. And I could find a way around her, I reasoned. There was a limit to the lengths I would go to win Randy’s affection — I was lazy, after all, and shy — but my obsession with him had become such a habit, I really lost all good sense. Who knows what I would have done had I found him French-kissing some Brigitte Bardot type? I don’t know that I was really capable of real violence. I probably would have punched myself in the head and rolled the windows up in the Dodge, prayed to die. Who knows?

But Randy wasn’t home when I got there. His bike wasn’t parked out front. So, for whatever reason, I decided to make good on my lie to my father and go to the cinema. Seeing movies has never been a favorite pastime of mine, but that afternoon I craved company. I didn’t like movies for the same reason I don’t like novels: I don’t like being told how to think. It’s insulting. And the stories are all so hard to believe. Furthermore, beautiful actresses always made me feel terrible about myself. I burned with envy and resentment as they smiled and frowned. I understand that acting is a craft, of course, and I have great respect for those who can toss themselves aside and assume new identities — as I have done, one might say. But generally speaking, women on-screen have made me feel ugly and lackluster and ineffectual. Back then especially, I felt that I had nothing to compete with — no real charm, no real beauty. All I had to offer were my skills as a doormat, a blank wall, someone desperate enough to do anything — just short of murder, let’s say — simply to get someone to like me, let alone love me. Until Rebecca showed up a few days later, all I could pray for was some kind of fluke or miracle wherein Randy would be forced to need and want me, like if I happened to save his life in a fire or a motorcycle accident, or if I wandered into the room with a handkerchief and a shoulder to cry on the moment he heard his mother had died. Such were my romantic fantasies.

There was a small cinema in X-ville that played only the most tasteful, childish movies. If I wanted to see Contempt or Goldfinger, I’d have had to drive ten or more miles south where the X-ville Women’s League’s clout ran out. I can’t say I was relieved or disappointed that my plans to stake out Randy’s place for the few remaining hours of sunlight fell to the wayside, but I do remember a sense of impending doom descending upon me as I drove toward the cinema. If I lost Randy to another woman, I’d have to kill myself. There’d be nothing else for me to live for. As I parked the car outside the cinema and rolled up the windows, it struck me again how easy it would be to die. One snagged vein, one late night skid on the icy interstate, one hop off the X-ville bridge. I could just walk into the Atlantic Ocean if I wanted to. People died all the time. Why couldn’t I?

“You’ll go to hell,” I imagined my father would say, busting in on me as I slit my wrists. I was afraid of that. I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell. And I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t always want to live, but I wasn’t going to kill myself. And anyway, there were other options. I could run away as soon as I had the courage, I told myself. The dream of New York City beckoned like the twinkling lights of the cinema marquee — a promise of darkness and distraction, temporary and at a cost, but anything was better than sitting around.