Darcey Steinke - Suicide Blonde

In the kitchen I poured dish soap into a sponge and washed the green ice-tea glasses and started on the flowered soup tureen filmed with hardened raspberries. Because of Bell and my parents I sometimes felt undermined, then other times I thought I was better off because I had gotten over a certain sentimental view of the world. I brooded on this as I ripped up several pairs of ancient boxers in order to dust, then carried the cloth fragments of a polka-dot pair to the living room. I liked dusting. . there wasn't the strenuous arm movement of other household chores, but a kind of elegant glide that even the smartest lady would be willing to do. You could imagine Virginia Woolf dusting, but to envision her cleaning a toilet was impossible. The white couch, the clock on the mantle, the lamp with the porcelain stem; this room was not as eclectic as the others. Instead each object was like a museum piece, icy with purpose. They were like the memories that interacted or repelled to create my changing moods.

Pig called out. I stood still, worried she had slipped on the tiles, lost her breath, realized her heart was about to explode, but then her voice straightened and I heard that she was calling for more wine.

MADAM PIG'S WINE GLASS SAT ON THE TUB'S LEDGE. THE STEAM thinned and her muddy features took on definition. Except for her lyrical personality, it was hard to believe she had ever been beautiful.

“Would you wash my back and make the symbols like you do,” she asked. “Don't deny it. I've felt them: stop signs, peace signs, Z's. It feels so good to absorb information through the skin.”

Her body underwater was gelatinous and rosy as a Rubens. If you didn't know what a body was supposed to look like, Madam Pig's body would be like a sloppy dream. Her breasts were buoyant and her ancient nipples bobbed at the surface. No matter how many times I saw her naked I was always surprised and a little horrified. But the philosophy of the tub, a woman and her bath, was different than the bedroom — there should be no taint of male criteria.

She spoke lazily about her aches and pains and eventually her voice mellowed into self-conscious wisdom. “When I was your age, Jesse, I'd see some gesture, like the way a strange man opened his jacket or how a girl lifted her foot to check her heel, and I wouldn't be able to lace it into my memory. Instead, the image would be stilled, it would have the awful inactivity of death and this magnified the moment around me: my heart, car tremors, clouds, people working their bodies. Very plainly then I'd see the dark silence of the end. But now that I know death is near, it's not dramatic or startling, just boring.”

“You wouldn't die,” I said, “if you went to the doctor.” She ignored me, pretended to wash her elbow. Her pubic hair reminded me of some elaborate seaweed.

“Why don't you call your daughter?” I asked.

“I haven't seen Madison for five years,” Pig said.

“So, you could call her up now.”

“I was hoping you would call her.”

“I don't even know her.”

Pig closed her eyes so long I thought she had fallen asleep. “In an effort,” Pig said, “to explain why I can never call her I will tell you how Madison came to leave. Steven left me. He had a private income and those people never really get attached to anything. Madison took it hard, stayed in her room, cut her hair short and got a nose ring. And in the same spirit she bought a wolf It was half grown and very tame, a charcoal-and-honey colored animal with dark green eyes. She named it London and fed it hamburgers, sometimes the occasional black-market squirrel. We kept it tied in the back. So many times it pulled its stake out we finally got a boy to pour a cement base. It barked a lot and whined. The neighborhood kids threw sticks over the fence to tease it. They thought it was a rabid dog. After a while Madison started asking if we could set it free in Big Sur. I was in a sick mood and liked to watch the thing suffer. Madison began threatening to leave, but I didn't believe her. One morning I woke before dawn to a horrible yelping in the backyard. The air felt like certain Good Fridays. The wolf’s chain was pulled tightly over the fence. I looked through the wood planks and saw the wolf's dead eyes and Madison's smiling face. She had called the wolf, who then tried to jump the fence in an effort to follow her.” Pig looked into the water. “It hung itself as Madison watched. . What kind of a girl would do a thing like that?” she asked solemnly. The lilac soap slipped into the water. The plop disturbed her and she continued. “I haven't seen her since. I heard she was working in the Tenderloin and I had a detective follow her. Get the brass box.” I brought it over and she opened it and handed a slip of paper to me. “Go to her. Tell her I'm dying.”

“Why don't you go?”

“You know I never leave the house.”

I looked at the address, then at Pig. Though she looked drained, the story seemed false. But I felt sorry for her, and her expectant face reminded me of my mother's; both had the cast of women that have been left in middle age. As she pulled herself out with a great suck of water, I handed her a towel.

“I hate the vague egalitarianism of these times, it insists that there are no qualitative standards. Judge and be judged,” Pig said. “That is my saying.”

She wrapped the towel around her head like a turban and I helped with her robe. Her face was red from the bath. At the banister, Pig had to stop because she felt dizzy. She tipped way forward and I realized then, because of the hingey way her head bobbed, that she was very drunk. Pig's head dropped lower. She gagged and a long line of glittering burgundy ribboned down the stairwell. Lifting her head sleepily, she said, “I want you to find her.” I wiped her mouth and helped her down the hall to her room.

The green curtains were shut and the single candle looked fuzzy, like a dandelion. It was mid-afternoon, though inside the room it always seemed like midnight. She clutched my arm and asked if I'd get her a cardboard box from the bookshelf. Inside were photographs, large black-and-whites on thin paper: Pig's husband leaning against the door of his race car. He wore sunglasses and there was something in the firm set of his mouth that told me Pig had had a very hard time. There were others, a lovely woman, who I figured was his sister, in a blouse with a Peter Pan collar, her dark hair tied back with a scarf.

“Who's that?” I asked.

Pig did not open her eyes, did not answer.

“You were beautiful,” I said, feeling embarrassed. I shuffled the photos together and handed them to her.

“I was.” She grabbed my wrist hard. “You don't want to end up like me.”

I wanted to yell at Pig that there was no more poignancy in the aging of a beautiful woman than a plain one. If beautiful girls had higher expectations it was only because of vanity, not that they were better people or more blessed. And besides, it didn't seem possible I could end up like Pig. She let her nails dig into the soft part of my arm and with the pain I thought, Once she was like me.

She must have noticed my look of recognition because she released me and I walked over to the window, held the curtain back. There was a milky lavender rising beyond the power lines.

“You can go now,” she said softly. “I'll be all right.”

I blew out the candle and walked to the door. Pig sat up into the crack of hall light.

“Remember, Jesse,” she said, “there is no black angel but love.”

OUTSIDE THE MARKET STREET BART STATION, PAVEMENT PUDdles reflected bits of clouds, pigeons balanced on the Woolworth's sign and punks panhandled the tourists in line for the cable cars. Across the street an abandoned porno theater still showed posters of women in garters and push-up bras. The prospect of a search gave the streets a tingly importance. I decided to go see Bell at the costume shop he worked at on Eddy. As I passed the Golden Nugget on the corner, drinkers raised their heads, men and women who looked alike, as if booze had an androgynous physical ideal.