Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“Well you wouldn’t know, would you? Because you don’t need anything… but fame.”

Lenora had resumed staring at her legs.

“I miss you,” he said. “I wish you missed me.”

“How can I miss you when you won’t go away?”

Hank blinked at her a moment. Then he went white, stormed off to the bathroom, shut the door and threw himself down on the blue bath mat. He had come there to sob but instead vomited a dark sauce like blood or chocolate. It seemed there would be more but he just knelt there panting with his chin on the toilet seat.

The room twitched and spun and he tried to remember what the fuck he had eaten. Then he closed his eyes and saw all the little cheese cubes on toothpicks… a single cracker… three grapes.

He wiped his mouth and curled like a comma on the rug. He wanted to cry but couldn’t. He slept.

• • •

In the morning birds chirped and one apart from the rest, screaming a hideous tune. One bird always sings alone, he thought. The one who can’t sing — he sings alone. Hank unstuck his mouth from the blue bath mat. Sunlight splashed into his eyes like Clorox.

A few seconds rolled by and reality assembled itself. He grasped his pounding forehead and remembered Lenora’s face, her smeary red mouth, the words: How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

In the mirror a creature blinked back at him. He ducked his face over the sink and shocked it with cold water, massaging his stubbly jaw. How can I miss you when you won’t go away? The phrase haunted his thoughts until it dawned on him: they were lyrics from a Dan Hicks song.

Anger moved him like a windup toy to the kitchen, where he paused in the doorframe to stare.

Lenora was smoking by the window, fanned-out papers and a small brass ashtray before her on the round wood table. She wore a pale orange silk robe patterned with silvery flowers, her tangled brown hair beaming in sunshine.

“Dan Hicks,” he said.

“What?”

“How can I miss you when you won’t go away.”

She stared.

“You fucking said that to me last night.”

“Oh.”

“It’s the name of a Dan Hicks song.”

“Okay.”

He stared. “Are you even listening?”

She took a drag and the smoke seemed to vanish inside her. “My mom died,” she said.

“What?”

“She fell.”

“When did this happen?”

“This morning. They just called me.”

“Shit.”

Lenora made an O with her mouth, released a pale cloud. “There isn’t enough time to impress people,” she said.

“You wanted to impress her?”

“I think I did.” She held very still with a pained look of contemplation. “I think I loved her.”

“Of course you did.”

“No — not of course ,” she said nastily. “You don’t have to love your mother — a lot of people don’t. Maybe most people don’t. I thought I didn’t… but I do.” Her gaze flew around the room and crashed into his. “I loved her,” she said. “And I don’t love you.”

Hank heard static. He held the doorframe, his fingertips fused to the wood. He could stand there forever, he thought, become part of the wall.

“Why would you say that?” he managed.

“It’s what I’m thinking.” She stabbed her cigarette out. “I thought you liked that.”

“Liked what ?”

“That I say what I’m thinking.”

“I do — of course I do. But damn it… I wish you were thinking something else.”

“I might go to Paris.”

He stared. I might chop your head off, he thought.

“I just want to be alone.”

“In the most romantic city in the world — that’s repulsive, Lenora.”

“Fine. It’s repulsive.”

Hank shut his eyes, listened to the pounding chamber of his poisoned body. He heard his heart — he thought he did. It sounded sick and broken, like a tin clock at the bottom of a murky pond, ticking somehow, one whiskered fish floating by.

Lenora slammed her fist down on the table and his eyes popped open.

“I should have known she would fall ,” she said.

“How could you have known?”

“You should’ve seen her. She looked so small in her nightgown. She had the skinny — almost girlish legs of a skeleton. And she kept asking to see her father,” Lenora said, transfixed. “It’s so weird — dementia. Everyone you ever cared about comes back to life.”

“I know. It’s like one big wish.” Hank walked toward her, not knowing what he would do when he got there.

Lenora started to cry.

He took her head in his hands and stroked it, which felt absurd, tending to the woman who didn’t love him anymore. But his love for her — it was intact.

A block of light trembled on the table, faintly pink. A merciful light.

Hank looked down at the mess of papers before her. “What is all this?”

“The contest.” She sniffed. “The goddamn stories .”

“Did you pick someone?”

“No.” She wiped her nose. “People got less interesting the longer I looked.”

George Harrison was a Pisces, she thought. And I am a Capricorn. She was in bed with her laptop balanced on her stomach. On the screen she read that some Pisces and Capricorn couples can make it work, but only if the Capricorn can learn to be less controlling. I could be less controlling, she thought, feeling certain.

But he was dead. It was like everything else. She was too late. It’s not the end of the world, she imagined her father would say. Because her father always said this when someone was moping. But it is, she thought. It’s the end of the world.

All day she had been trying to write. She was so close but she was also lost. She was crawling in the dark. She minimized the astrology love-match screen, then read the last page she had written with building disappointment.

“It’s just a collection of stories,” she said aloud. “You just have to finish the last story. Why is that so fucking hard?” Instantly she felt a slap of shame for talking to herself. She realized she was impersonating her father. It was a familiar shock that left her feeling hollow and used, like someone entered by a parasite that hooks into the brain and rides the body around like a car.

She shut her eyes tightly, then opened them wide. It was obvious why the story was hard to finish. Because it was about her. And I hate myself, she thought. It was no secret. Everyone in her life was always saying, “You have to love yourself.” It made her hate them too.

She began scrolling through all the Beatles songs on her computer. Then she clicked on the most played song: “Here Comes the Sun,” and the same sweet little guitar came into the room, the same voice. Instantly it threw her into ecstasy. Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here.

Her eyes filled with tears. She wondered how the same song continued to touch her this way. It has all the same little fingers, she thought, her eyes shimmering in the white glare of the screen. She sat up and a fat tear landed on the R key.

The Beatles wrote children’s songs, she thought, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. And George wrote the weird ones. That’s why I like him, she decided. Cause I’m a weird little girl.

But she wasn’t a little girl. She was twenty-eight, though it hardly seemed true. The thought shoved her into despair. I’m not old yet, she thought, frowning at the computer. But I’m not young either. She imagined two islands: one of babyhood, the other decrepitude. And she saw herself wading between them, seaweed flowing at her ankles. I could drown this way, she thought. Between worlds .