Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen

Lying there on my cot, I agonized over what to wear. I imagined Rebecca would be dressed comfortably — no elaborate gown or expensive jewelry, it was her house after all — but beautifully, perhaps in a thick cashmere sweater and fitted trousers, like Jackie Kennedy on a ski vacation. As for Rebecca’s house, I pictured dark rolling Oriental carpets, sumptuous couches with velvet pillows, a bearskin rug. Or maybe it was more modern and austere, dark wood floors, cold glass coffee table, burgundy drapes, fresh-cut roses. I was excited. I dozed, mentally taking stock of the garments in my mother’s wardrobe and piecing together what I would wear that evening. I knew every item of clothing inside out. Nothing fit me right, as I’ve said, so I often wore layers of sweaters or long underwear just to fill things out. Lying there, I had a bad habit of drumming my fists on my stomach and pinching the negligible amount of fat on my thighs. I sincerely believed that if there were less of me, I would have fewer problems. Perhaps it was for this reason that I wore my mother’s clothes — to be vigilant in my mission never to reach even her minor proportions. As I’ve said, her life, the life of a woman, seemed utterly detestable to me. There was nothing I wanted less back then than to be somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife. Of course, I’d already become just that for my father by the tender age of twenty-four.

“Eileen!” my father yelled, stomping up the attic stairs sometime later that morning. “The store’s open already. Come on, get down!” When I opened the door, he was dressed, had his hands on his hips. “Isn’t it Christmas Eve?” he asked.

“No, Dad,” I lied. “You missed Christmas. Christmas was yesterday.”

“Smart ass,” he said. “I’ll spare you my hell if you get down now, quick.”

“All right,” I said. “But who’s driving?”

“You’re driving. Now get in the car and let’s go. I’m coming with you.”

It was rare that my father dared to make an appearance outside the house like a normal person, but he was adamant about it that morning. Perhaps he sensed somehow that I was going to abandon him. More likely he was afraid of shops closing over the holidays and didn’t trust me to buy him enough booze to get him through. He never explained his choice to move from the kitchen chair to the bed upstairs. It might have been a strategic move. Without his gun, he was defenseless against the hoodlums and was better off hiding. My mother’s deathbed was just as good a place as any to die, he may have thought. Not that he had surrendered, that was clear. He seemed just as on guard as ever. “Hurry now!” he yelled, busting open the front door to the bright, sparkling morning. “Before they sell out. It’s Christmas Eve. Wine for wolves. Get out there. You got the keys? Lock up. People are crazy this time of year. Crime spikes. It’s a proven fact, Eileen. Jesus Christ.” I went and got his shoes, threw them up on the porch. He kept talking. “Everybody out, probably leaving their doors wide open. Stupid. Idiots. Don’t they know this town is full of thieves?” He slid into the shoes and shuffled out to the car, wincing in the sunlight like a man crawling out of a cave, arms held feebly above his head, shielding his eyes. On the passenger seat beside me he lifted his feet one by one, had me lean over and tie his shoelaces.

The roads on the drive to the liquor store glittered with fresh snow once again. The streetlamps were wrapped in ribbon and holly, store window displays were festive, pretty. Along the sidewalks people hustled, dressed up in hats and plaid wool coats and boots and mittens. The hems of women’s skirts skimmed the shelves of snow along the sidewalks. People balanced stacks of brightly colored packages in their arms, piling them in the trunks of their cars. There was almost music in the air. Children built snowmen in their front lawns, played in the yard of the public library. I would miss that old library. I couldn’t realize at the time how those books had saved me. I rolled my window down.

“It’s cold,” said my father. I hadn’t ever told him about the exhaust problem.

“The air in here is stale,” I said. In fact it still smelled of vomit in there, but my father couldn’t detect it. The gin reeking through his skin and on his breath obliterated all other smells around him, I assumed.

“Stale? Who cares about stale?” He reached over my lap, brushing my thighs, then stuck an elbow haphazardly between my knees as he rolled the window back up. I just looked ahead calmly. He had no respect for my comfort or privacy. When I was younger and just beginning to develop, he sometimes sat at the kitchen table at night drinking with my mother and called me over to assess my progress, to pinch and measure.

“Not so good, Eileen,” he would say. “You’ve got to try harder.”

“Come on now,” Mom said, laughing. “Don’t be cruel.” And then once she said instead, “She’s too old for you to touch now, Charlie,” and clucked her tongue.

It could have been much worse, of course. Other girls got rubbed and grabbed and violated. I just got poked and ridiculed. Still, it hurt and angered me, and made me lash out later in life when I felt I was being measured and judged. A man I lived with for a time suggested I secretly wished I’d been big breasted, that I felt bad because I’d disappointed my father with my “small rack. Every girl wants daddy’s hands on her tits,” that man had said. What an idiot. He was just a mediocre musician from a wealthy family. I put up with him for a while because I thought maybe he was pointing to some dark truth about myself, and I suppose he was. I was a fool to be with a man like him. I was a fool about men in general. I learned the long way about love, tried every house on the block before I got it right. Now, finally, I live alone.

“Where in hell are you going?” my father hissed, going stiff and sliding down across his seat as I turned a corner. He wasn’t quite right in the head, as I’ve said. He was scared of his own shadow. I think that’s clear by now. “This is not the way. There are bad people here, and goddammit, Eileen, I didn’t bring my gun.”

“We can throw snowballs,” I laughed. The gun was in my purse, of course. My father seemed to prefer to believe he’d just misplaced it. I didn’t care. Nothing could disrupt my good mood. Finally, with Rebecca to celebrate it, I would have a Christmas I could enjoy. My father could strip me nude and pelt me with shards of glass, for all I cared. Nothing was going to get to me that day. Soon I’d be at Rebecca’s house where I’d be treated like a queen.

“Get me out of here,” he whined as he pulled the collar of his coat up over his head. Stopped at a light, he gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “Hoodlums,” he whispered, eyes cloudy with fear. I just chuckled, coasted through the city streets, past the cemetery, past the police station, then back around, looping through the elementary school parking lot. I guess I was trying to torture him. “Tell me what you see,” he said. “Are they following us? Did they see me? Act natural. Don’t speak. Just drive. And roll down the windows, yeah, that’s a good idea. That way if they shoot at us the glass won’t shatter.”

I rolled down my window gladly. I enjoyed my father’s madness that day. He was a comic figure, slapstick almost. When we got to Lardner’s he spoke in hushed tones to Mr. Lewis behind the counter, ordered up a case of gin and pulled a few bags of potato chips off the shelf. I bought a bottle of wine for my evening at Rebecca’s. Dad didn’t ask questions. On the ride home he lay across the backseat, shaking and sweating. And when I pulled into our driveway he crawled out of the car, swam through the snow to the front porch, begging for me to “come faster, open the door, let me in. It’s not safe out here.” I calmly carried the box of booze up the front walk to the porch, but he was impatient, scrambled through the living room window, chiding me for leaving it unlocked—“Are you crazy?” When he opened the door from the inside, he ripped the top off the box of gin and pulled out two bottles, slung one under each armpit. “I’ve raised a fool,” he said. I watched him scuttle inside, kick off his shoes. “Two days old!” he yelled, and cleared his throat, settling into his easy chair with the newspaper he’d found frozen on the porch. I was too concerned with my own plans to bother to lock his shoes back up in the trunk right away.