Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen

Perhaps a week earlier I’d have pined for a normal Christmas, wishing I could knock on somebody’s door, sit down at a lavish table — a turkey or ham or lamb, or roast duck being carved by a handsome and grinning old father. I may have pined for a loving mother in pearl earrings, a gentle granddad in a hand-knit sweater, a floppy-eared hound, a crackling fire. Perhaps if I’d never met Rebecca, I would have driven out of X-ville full of regrets. Maybe I would have sobbed at my failure to thrive, sworn to God I’d change, be a real lady, eat three square meals a day, sit still like a good girl, keep a diary, go to church, pray, wear clean clothes, have nice girlfriends, date boys, go steady, do laundry, and so on — anything if it meant I didn’t have to forge my way alone, an orphan driving out into that cold Christmas morning.

But as it turned out, on my way out of X-ville I had no regrets, and I was not alone. Rita Polk sat limp beside me in the Dodge, almost reverent in her complete silence. Her hands — wide, blue with cold — fell onto the seat between us as I took a turn. I picked them up and placed them gently in her lap.

I drove slowly through the deserted streets, past the elementary school, X-ville High, town hall. I took a route past the police station, bid adieu to all that green copper, those large windows, the fluorescent lights and dirty linoleum floor inside. I drove down Main Street, gray and empty in the dim morning. Needles of yellow sunlight fell from the horizon through the low buildings and illuminated the interior of the barber shop, the gold lettering on the bakery window, the crystalized slush in the gutter in front of the X-ville post office. The light teased and waned on my way out of town, as though it understood that I could not look at the place all at once, but only in glimpses, in details, and the wind howled and bit at my face and said for me to remember X-ville this way, swirling in the light and wind, just a place on Earth, a town like any other, walls and windows, nothing to be missed or loved or longed for. I tried the radio, tuned it past all the Christmas carols, then turned it off again.

I wish I could feel again the brief peace I found on that northbound highway. My mind was empty, eyes wide with wonder at the passing forests and snow-filled pastures. The sunlight blared through the trees, and at a particular swerve in the road, it blinded me. When I could see again, there was a deer standing a few yards ahead, blocking my way. I slowed, watching the animal frozen there, staring back at me head-on, as though I’d kept it waiting. I pulled over and rolled the car window back up.

Mrs. Polk was sound asleep when I left her in the car, still running by the side of the road. There was enough gas left in the tank for it to run for hours. I hope she opened her eyes to appreciate where I’d left her. If I’d had to die, that gorgeous stretch of white forest lit iridescent blue in the near dawn, still and cold, was as good a place as any. I said good-bye to the Dodge as I walked toward the deer, frozen still, breath steaming from its nostrils and hanging in the air between us like so many ghosts. I raised my hand as though to greet it. It just stood there, big black eyes fixed on mine, startled but kind, face tinged with frost, antlers floating above its head like a crown. I remember that, how I crumbled before that animal, its body quaking and heavy and huge. Tears finally filled my eyes. I opened my mouth to speak to it, but it trotted off down the embankment and into the woods. That was it. I cried. I smeared my tears around to rub the blood off my face and kept walking, my footsteps crisp and certain in the frozen snow.

When I thumbed a ride a few miles up at a crossroads heading south, I told the driver that I’d had a fight with my mother. The man passed me his thermos full of whiskey. I gulped it down, and cried some more.

“There, there,” he said, patting my thigh with his thick, cold-burnt hand.

I sank into the passenger seat and drank and looked out the fogged-up window. I watched that old world go by, away and away, gone gone gone, until, like me, it disappeared.