Darcey Steinke - Suicide Blonde

“Let's sit down,” he said, “on those steps there.” We sat on the lowest step of a Victorian. He took my hand into his lap. It was like holding the cool hand of a child. We were quiet. He spoke in a deep voice that sounded strange coming from his tiny body. “Let me tell you about yourself. You're a girl from the suburbs. A good girl, not that you haven't done bad things. You've lied to seem interesting, complex, and it's worked, especially combined with your intrinsic charm. You still think of that cheap ranch house, the bedroom with white furniture and the mall you went to on Saturdays, browsing through discount records, drinking Orange Julius and buying plastic earrings at K-mart. You want to be different, not just from your suburban neighbors, but from everyone. It's not really megalomania, you just need to feel special in order to believe you are loved.”

I started to open my mouth, though I had no idea what I would say. But the troll held his hand up. “Just let me finish. . Your parents are divorced. With a girl you can tell around her eyes, boys have other ways of showing.” My mind went away from the troll's voice. I thought how odd it was my parents were divorced. How one day I had a set of grumpy parents in a home that held the family archives and the next my father had married a younger woman and enthusiastically joined her family. And my mother was so bitterly furious in her little divorcée condo it was hardly possible for her to interact civilly with me at all. The little man talked on.

“Your father cheated before he left your mother. This has made it hard for you to trust men. But you're also suspicious that your mother undermined your father's love by scrutiny and mockery. You have noticed this trend in yourself and it frightens you.”

There was a feeling like I was breaking up, blood seeping out of arteries, exposed veins moving like snapped electric wires. “If you're so good at this,” I said, “what about Bell?”

He was angry I wasn't more appreciative of his magical trollish predictions. Stupid troll. Whether he had guessed or not, I would always think he had heard everything from Bell. I had a sudden vision of Bell in bed, his warm soft skin under the blankets, his head filled with erotic blue dreams. I looked at the little man still talking and thought, What he is saying has nothing to do with me.

I stood abruptly. He stood too, screwed his face up. He was going to have a temper tantrum like trolls do. And he did stamp his little foot and say, “You'll never be happy unless you learn to forgive.” His neck muscles constricting, his little fists tightly at his sides, as if without absolute control they would start punching. I thought, like a wife , and turned, heading quickly down the hill. He grabbed my arm, whispered that I was a fool to hate people who were obviously one thing or another and by not choosing to be something completely I would end badly. “Watch out,” he said, when I finally pulled away. “You don't want to become a fag hag.” The thought hit my chest like a solid punch. The ones I knew had dramatic hairstyles, wore expensive tailored clothing and elaborate make-up. They talked loud, telling self-deprecating stories, then laughed drunkenly whether intoxicated or not. They seemed foolish and desperate, willingly abused by their gay friends.

I didn't want to go back to the apartment, so I walked over a few blocks and into Nob Hill. The streets were filled with cars and people coming out of their apartment buildings, hurrying to work. I saw a clean and attractive couple holding hands. I got close enough to smell her fragrant hair and his aftershave. They spoke in an intimate code and I thought of asking them if they would take me home. I followed until they kissed at the corner of Columbus and Grant and went off for the day in separate directions.

PIG'S HOUSE WAS DARK AND DAMP, THE ONLY LIGHT FROM twenty portraits of Madison lining the hallway. Lit dramatically, each had its own small brass fixture. Up close there was an angelic idealization around the lips and the colors of her eyelids were garish oranges and blues, creepy, matched with the babyish roundness of Madison's face. In one wide childish eye there was even a lumpish figure that resembled Pig. I originally thought a professional had done them, but it was clear now that Pig had drawn them herself. I heard a moan, looked up the stairwell and saw Pig's chubby hand flailed out through the slats of the banister.

“I'm flipped like a beetle,” Pig yelled. The red nails of her fingers jerked and I could see, mashed into the banister, a lock of her hair and muzzy scalp beneath. I was scared at first. The woodwork under her fingers was stained red and a steady drip made a dark puddle near where I stood on the carpet. Holding my hand up, I caught a drop on my palm, a fragrant red wine.

“For God's sake, Jesse, hurry!” Pig yelled out. I ran up the stairwell to where she lay. Her kimono was tugged awkwardly up on one side, stained with wine and urine. A greenish vein beat in her pale forehead and her lipstick had dried in the cracks around her mouth. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull herself up a little. I had decided to be firm with Pig, chastise her for lying, give no information until I got some semblance of truth. But seeing her softened me, her fat fingers curled around my forearm, her cheek against my shoulder, she purred a little, seemed as happy as a child to see me. Besides, I felt pulverized from last night. Resolution, I decided, relied on distance.

I heaved her up by the waist, she hinged in the middle like a sack of flour, her head as loose as a rag doll's. Pig strained to arch her back, to get a hand up on the banister, to steady herself, but her legs folded under her and she slumped back lumpishly to the floor. “I'll never get up,” she said breathlessly, “and I've made such a mess of it.” She sunk her head into her hands, splaying her hair, the gray roots making it seem as if Pig had aged overnight. I squatted down, put my arm around her, braced myself against the railing and pushed up. This way Pig was able to get first one chubby bare foot under her, then the other. She rose slowly with one long moan. At eye level Pig looked into my face, trying to see whether I had found Madison. “It's better that I fell,” Pig said breathlessly. “Just before I went down I started thinking I controlled everything; if I chose peppermint tea instead of lemon a car would crash on the highway.”

Standing, she seemed strong, but as we moved toward the bedroom Pig's head slumped against mine. Her painted toenails dragged on the carpet. In the doorway she lunged toward the bed like it was the last rock before the waterfall. I propped her head up with the paisley pillows and opened the curtains to keep her oriented. Light shimmered on the tall cherry bedpost, highlighting the empty gilded frame over the bed. Pig was never willing to tell me what had been in the frame or why she had taken it out.

“It was horrible,” she said. “I fell, tried a few times to rise, but then gave up and just lay there in the dark. . Every now and then I'd hear a dog bark or a plane fly overhead. It was like I was a freighter ship going down and my earlier girl-self was on deck waving a yellow scarf.”

I got her to lean up so I could peel off her rancid robe. Pig's body gave off the yeasty smell of bread dough. It was strange to see her; now that I suspected she wasn't a mother, her swollen body seemed even more embarrassing. I went down the hall to the bathroom and wet a towel with warm water. No matter how vulnerable people are, how fragile the delusional structure of their lives, they go on living. People die from liver failure, heart attacks and gunshots but not from loneliness, vanity or confusion — it was this obvious insight that startled me and seemed suddenly amazing. The water had gotten so hot it steamed up the mirror and made my hands numb. I wrung the towel out at its cooler edges and carried it down the hall. Pig's eyes had teared with relief and I let her wipe her face first, before I took the heavy towel and gently rubbed the hollow of her armpit. The hair was long and matted like winter grass. “You know, I was thinking of you and Bell last night,” Pig said, settling down. “I remembered a man I knew who had homosexual tendencies, but went straight. His name was Neal. He worked as a cook, breakfast shift, then spent the afternoon picking up men on the beach.” Pig paused, savoring the picture of nude men entangled on the back dunes. “Suddenly he became religious, decided he needed a wife, one with a couple kids — boys, I think.” Pig's face animated as the details became vivid in her memory: smells, textures, shades of color. I knew how a memory could spiral off like loose yarn.