Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen

I followed Mrs. Polk back out into the office, but turned to watch as Rebecca stepped into the visitation room and slid the mother’s now vacant chair up close to Lee’s. She spoke to him, and his grin faded. His head bowed as he listened. It looked like they had an intimate rapport, but when could that have developed? Rebecca had just arrived at Moorehead, and already she was leaning in close toward him, bending her face down below his, her eyebrows raised, eyes sparkling and searching up at his. I guided Mrs. Polk toward the counter, handed her a pen, and watched her sign her name: Rita P. Polk. It wasn’t an angry penmanship. It was casual, unconcerned — irrelevant. She didn’t look back at her son, just blinked heavily, sighed as though clocking out at work, then swung her coat up around her shoulders and walked back down the hall. I imagined her returning to her home to crochet another terrible sweater, swear and grind her teeth every time she missed a stitch. I felt sorry for her. I knew instinctively that the woman, this widow, had no other children.

Following protocol, I signaled to James to prepare for the next boy’s visit. But Rebecca was still talking with Lee. Lee had turned away from her and laid his hands across the table. I walked into the room to tell them to clear out, suddenly full of courage. I saw clearly then the word tattooed on Lee’s fingers. It was “LOVE.” That disturbed me deeply. I said nothing, but watched as the boy sniffed, and gruffly swept a tear off his cheek with the butt of his hand. Rebecca put her hand on his shoulder. And then she put another hand on his knee below the table. This, in plain sight, and with me standing there, she dared get so close to the boy, touching him like that, leaning over enough that he might simply lift his gaze to peer down the front of her blouse, that he could easily raise his chin to meet his lips with hers. I stared disbelievingly. Did they really not see me? How was it that the boy didn’t fidget and squirm? He seemed quite comfortable, really. How could I interrupt them? I stared at the floor. When James returned with the next child, he knocked lightly on the door frame.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “but we need the room.”

“Of course,” said Rebecca. Then she spoke quietly to Lee. “We can talk more in my office. You want a Coke?” Lee nodded. “I’ll get you a Coke,” she said. As they got up, Randy came in with handcuffs. “Oh no,” Rebecca said. “That isn’t necessary.” And she took Lee by the arm back down the hall, leaving James stunned and blushing until I cleared my throat, pointed at the new boy at his side. I watched Lee’s now tepid gait as they walked away. It was so very odd, and it angered me because I couldn’t understand what had happened and because Rebecca seemed to care more for this Lee Polk than she did for me.

For the remaining visiting hours, I replayed the scene again and again: Rebecca leaning so close to the boy, her hair spilling across her back and shoulders, so near that surely he could smell the scent of her shampoo, her perfume, her breath, her sweat. And she must have felt him responding to her, the tension in his shoulder building under her hand, chest rising and falling with every breath, the heat coming off of him. But then to put her hand on his knee, I couldn’t imagine what that could mean. If I hadn’t been there, if they’d been alone, would her hand have begun to knead the boy’s thigh, travel up along his inseam, gently cup his private parts? Would he have swept Rebecca’s hair away and would his lips have parted as he inhaled the scent of her neck? Would he have kissed her neck, held her face between his almost manly hands, run his fingers, LOVE, over her slender wrists and up her arms to her breasts, kissing her, pulling her toward him, feeling all of her, warm and soft and all there in his arms? Would they have done all that?

I fantasized as best I could, jealous first of Rebecca, then of Lee, and switching back and forth as I considered their roles and how they’d betrayed me, since already I’d decided that Rebecca was mine. She was my consolation prize. She was my ticket out. Her behavior with this boy really threatened all that. Was this what they’d taught Rebecca to do at Harvard — to win these boys over with charm and affection, then educate them? Perhaps this was some new way, I tried to think, some kind of liberated thinking. But the more I considered it, the crazier it seemed. What was she saying to him? How close could they have become in a matter of days? What had Rebecca done or said to earn Lee’s trust? I imagined the scene back in Rebecca’s office. I wanted to know what was happening. Visitors came and went. I felt sick with abandonment. I was so very dramatic. I figured I ought to leave then and there, to spare myself any more misery. Once again I imagined driving my Dodge off the cliffs and down onto the rocks by the ocean. Wouldn’t that be thrilling? Wouldn’t that be the way to show them all that I was brave, that I was tired of following their rules? I would rather die than stand around, be among them, drive on their nice streets, or sit in their nice prison — no, not me. I nearly cried standing there. Even Randy, beautiful and smelling of smoke and polished leather, couldn’t cheer me.

But then I saw it — the notebook. Rebecca had left it on the ledge of the window behind the table. And so when the last visitor left, I snatched it and walked down through the corridors toward Rebecca’s office, quite pleased that I’d found such a good excuse to poke my nose in. I hoped that Lee was still in there with her and I could catch the two of them red-handed. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, but I put my ear to the door, straining to hear sighs and moans, or whatever people sounded like when they made love. I’d never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons. I heard, felt nothing. I knocked on Rebecca’s office door.

“Oh, Eileen,” she chirped when she opened it. “Are you all right?”

I took a step back, feeling like a child, a nuisance. I extended the notebook toward her. She took it, thanked me, said she hoped I hadn’t read it.

“Of course I didn’t,” I told her. I couldn’t have, anyway — that chicken scratch was indecipherable.

“I’m only teasing,” she laughed. “My book of secrets.” She clutched the notebook to her chest. She had a way of laughing, head thrown back, jaw cut so smooth and white and hard, as if it were rimmed in porcelain, eyes first pinched in ecstasy, then wide and wild — devilish eyes, beautiful eyes — then face lowered, beaming with affection or derision, I couldn’t tell. I turned to leave, but she stopped me by laying a hand on my shoulder. This sent chills down my spine. Nobody had touched me like that in years. I forgave her instantly for betraying me with the boy. I could hear him inside clearing his throat.

“Say,” she began. “Would you be up for a drink after work tonight? I don’t know anyone in this darn town, and I would love to treat you to a cocktail, if you’re game.”

The way she talked was so canned, so scripted, it inspired me to be just as canned. “Say.” People didn’t really talk like that. “A cocktail.” If she seems insincere, she was. She was terribly pretentious, and later, in hindsight, I felt she’d insulted my intelligence by selling me her scripted bunk. “Darn it all.” But at the time I felt I was being invited into an elite world of beautiful people. I was flattered. And I was flustered. I had never received such an invitation in my life, so this was as thrilling and terrifying as hearing someone tell me, “I love you.” I was full of gratitude. I didn’t think of my father, my evening duties, any of that. I just said, “OK.”