Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

Gee, other than that, we’re free and clear.

“Christ,” Little Teena says.

“There’s no mention of Marlene,” I say to Little Teena. “Or the showbiz goons.”

“I noticed,” he goes.

Obsidian comes up behind me and spoons me and says, “She got away, I’m sure of it.”

My stomach feels pretty much like I swallowed cement and my bunghole is forever encased in stone. I feel dizzy. I sit on the edge of the dirt brown and ochre bed and put my head between my legs. What are they going to do to “Ted?” Is Sig in jail? And where in the hell is Marlene? Alive? Dead? All because of me? “Fucking fuck …” I exhale.

A hand rests on my shoulder. I clamp on it — thinking it’s Obsidian — but right away I feel the wedding ring and elastic skin so soft skin and realize it’s her. My mother.

“Ida,” she says.

I look up and straighten up and shoot a defiant look upwards. “My name is Dora now,” I say.

“I see,” she says. Not even fazed.

“Dora, then.”

I stand up and pace the room. I don’t look at her. I try not to smell her skin lotion or bath salts or vodka breath, all of which feel familiar as a teddy bear to me. I try not to want to touch her waves of hair. I try not to remember sitting in her lap and wanting to die there. “I have a plan,” I stammer. “Obsidian and I just need to get to the airport is all. We have … wigs.”

“Wigs?” My mother crosses her arms over her chest. She is wearing a black cotton turtle neck and black straight leg jeans. She looks like a pretty middle-aged Catherine Deneuve spymom. “Dora,” she says, clearing her throat, “may I speak to you alone? In the bathroom?”

Ave Maria grabs a hotel pillow and covers her head and ears with it. Little Teena proceeds to fix himself a drink. Obsidian looks at me with “if you want we can run” in her eyes.

Every part of me doesn’t want to speak alone in the bathroom. Except for of course my entire self, who just once wants more than oxygen to get to be alone with this beautiful spymom. To bury my face in her chest. To have her hold me and rock me like a tiny fucking baby and sing to me and FUCK. GODDAMN IT. GET A GRIP, PUSSY.

“Fine. Whatever.” I stomp into the bathroom.

Once we’re in there, my mother unbuttons her pants and pulls her pants and underwear down and pees. A great waterfall of gushing piss. I mean my mom’s vag is in full view. I stare at the sink.

“Oh gaaaaawwwwwwwd,” she moans. “I held that too long.”

I bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is doesn’t that feel kind orgasmically good?

My mother finishes peeing and stands up. The room smells briefly like very pretty bums. Then she flushes and sits on the edge of the bathtub. I lean against the closed bathroom door with my arms crossed over my chest. I stare at the shower head.

“Ida — I mean, Dora,” she goes, “this is a little awkward.”

No shit.

I sneak a peek at her face briefly. She has mother worry eyes and eyebrows. Her mouth purses. She blinks. Long eyelashes on a blonde are always beautiful. I quickly stare at the toilet paper roll, then feel dumb, shift my gaze to the mirror. That way I can look at her without looking at her. “You can tell them to release the Sig,” I go. “No one outside of my immediate family has done anything bad to me,” I say. “I’m fine.”

She closes her eyes. She sighs. Her sigh has years in it.

“Look,” she says, and her voice is tired out. She rubs her temple. She opens her eyes. I’m still looking in the mirror to see her. She stands up. Her hair smell wafts between us. Goddamn it. It’s the kind of hair smell that makes you want to bury your face in the waves.

“Too much has happened for me to try to change it. I mean you and me. You’re all grown up.” When she says “you and me” she waves her hand in the air between us like she’s shooing away flies. When she says “you’re all grown up” she puts her hands on her knees and spanks her kneecaps twice.

Something at the corner of my left eye aches.

She stares at her knees. “I blew it. I know it.”

My throat squeezing.

“You know, when I was pregnant with you, I left your father.”

Breath jacked. Lock jawed. Wha-wha-whut?

“I mean I thought I would leave him.” She looks up at me. “I came to this Holiday Inn. This room. I laid down on that bed,” she points to the bathroom wall. On the other side Ave Maria is probably laying right where she did. “I drank an entire bottle of vodka, and I put an entire bottle of Xanax in my mouth. The television was on. I rested there like that for some time. Some of the Xanax dissolved and went down my throat. I put my hands on my gigantic bare belly. You were in there. You kicked.”

She laughs that ironic kind of laugh people do when they don’t believe what they just said and closes her eyes. “You kicked really hard. Hard enough so that I yelped. Like you were already wearing your Doc Martens. It was just so obvious you were pissed off at me.” She laughs again. “I spit the pills out onto the floor. Then I slept.”

If I have feet, I don’t feel them. Or shins or knees. Even my hands and face feel like feathers. Still, I don’t move my eyes off of the mirror. Even though they’ve gone all watery blur, I don’t blink. I got no words for this. What sentence do you make when your mother just told you she tried to off herself with you waiting inside her belly for your ticket out?

“Dora, I want to tell you something important.”

Really. Great timing.

“You aren’t going to like it, but it will be true anyway.”

Awesome.

“Dora, you’re gonna have to learn to choose your battles. You have to stop fighting everything, and learn when to fight something that matters.”

Part of me wants to punch her straight in the kisser. You’ve been NUMBO for seventeen years and NOW you want to deliver some sage advice? Like we’re a mother and daughter? I clench my jaw and unclench it and clench it and unclench it. Wish I could put something in my mouth and bite the fuck out of it.

“S’that it?” I ask.

“Oh fuck it,” she says. She stands up, turns away from me toward the shower curtain, then turns back. It’s just that,” and she reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. “This is for you,” she says, holding the piece of paper out to me. “It’s why I went to Vienna. Somebody died. Somebody you never knew, but I did. At least for a while. My … my mother.”

For about thirty seconds I just let her hand and the piece of paper sit suspended in the air between us. A mother, a daughter, a piece of paper. It’s the most large thing that’s passed between us in a very long time. Maybe ever. On the other side of the wall Ave Maria is trying to match television commercial jingles with her voice. Finally I take the piece of paper.

You know what? It’s not a piece of paper. It’s a big bank check. Powder blue. A check for $1.7 million. You heard me. Made out to Ida Bauer. My birth name. Whoever she is.

Money. Again. Sig. Silverfuck. Now her. Is everything there is about being a girl in this world about money or genitals? Is life just a giant series of transactions?

My breathing goes weird. The check looks like a forgery. A cartoon. A graphic art project. A Xerox. A reproduction.

Anything but real. I quickly crumple it up hard in my hand and pop it in my mouth. My mother doesn’t flinch. I stare at her staring at me in the mirror. Inside my mouth the crumpled up fortune tastes like wood pulp and ink. It fills my mouth and jabs at the flesh of my cheeks. I turn and look at my mother head on.

She tilts her head and crosses her arms over her boobs. She sighs. She has the hint of a smile. “She wanted you to have the silver set as well,” my mother says, “but I suspect you’d just bend all the heads over or something equally … imaginative.”