Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

Out of Sacramento already, the environs quickly change from small city to suburbs. There are fast-food chains in orange and yellow — colors meant to stimulate the appetite — and homes exactly identical, or mirror images, of one another. Gillian is thinking about William sliding his hands up her legs, pinching the inside of her thigh until it burned pink; and her telling him that she didn’t like it, and him saying he was sorry. Always he was so sorry, so easily sorry, so easily made to feel guilty, and what difference did it make? She knows that Marianne Orlich loves her in particular, but was always kind to both children, and Marianne would feel generously even toward a boy she only remembers as somewhat of a piano prodigy and a lover of Beethoven sonatas. Maybe she will remember his thick, thick hair. She will be wondering, Gillian knows, why Gillian abandoned her brother. Gillian will have to have a good answer for this. She is stuck fast to the word abandon, not realizing that she is not, in fact, the older and therefore allegedly more independent one; that an outsider may see the situation as the following: William may have decided to stay at the house for his own reasons, or that he may be, in fact, doing fantastically by himself.

She’s been reading Randy’s notebook. Most of it is about Cassie, whom he calls “C.” In the notebook he details her body and behavior with what seems like astounding precision, to the point where Gillian feels she knows Cassie herself — has been inside C’s body (both sexually and spiritually), has possessed C’s thoughts. This privilege unnerves as much as it excites her. What, then, does it mean that Randy and C are no longer lovers? How many of these sorts of obsessive connections is Randy supposed to make before he dies? Exhausting.

“I have to pee,” she tells Marianne.

They find a gas station with an accompanying convenience store. While Marianne sits in the car, Gillian goes inside. Marianne can see Gillian walk to the back of the store with stiff and anxious limbs. She can see Gillian trying the knob to the door inside.

In the gas station, Gillian can’t help but think about the K & Bee, which felt significantly more dignified than this place — this place with its rows of unintelligent snack foods and candies. Staring openly at her like a stock boy, the presentation of cheap snacks in bright colors is as tempting as that kid with the blotchy face and long limbs, and licks a similar excitement up her belly. While she waits for the door to open she takes a box of Lots-a-Fun Candies and turns it over in her hive-covered hands, looking at the purple box and the oblong shapes. The typography makes her think of someone shouting. These things Gillian finds charming, and she falls into the old reverie. She smiles, unable to help herself.

“Hey, girly. You need a key for the bathroom.” It is the man behind the counter with long hair like Jesus.

Gillian comes back to the car, tapping on the window. The passenger door opens.

“You didn’t use the bathroom?” Marianne asks.

She slides in, slams the door. “It needed a key.”

“No one was there to give you the key?”

“I don’t know.” Gillian is picking at her cuticles. “Forget it.”

“Honey, you need to go. I’ll come with you, okay?”

Gillian hesitates. Eventually, they enter the convenience store together. The convenience store clerk — stoned — looks at the two of them, a woman and what he presumes is her daughter. The daughter will grow up to look like the mom. Already he can see it. The daughter’s beauty will turn handsome, with lines around the eyes and cheekbones sticking out of her now-soft face.

“The key to the restroom,” Marianne says.

The clerk has both elbows on the counter and is leaning forward as if settling in for a long conversation. He looks behind him at the key on a hook beside a sign for cigarettes. “You gonna buy something?”

“Sure.”

He hands over the key — a single small key on a thin ring, the entirety of which could easily be flushed down a toilet, and has already almost landed in the bowl several times.

Marianne gives Gillian the key. “Go ahead,” she says.

Gillian takes the key and goes back to the restroom. TOILETS, the door says in marker. She slides the key into the opening and turns it before yanking on the knob. She turns the knob the other way. It clicks without gratification. Her panic intensifies; she is unaccustomed to locks and keys. She looks back and sees that Marianne is talking to the clerk, pointing at something behind the counter on the wall, inattentive to her needs.

“Help!” she yells, her panic surprising even herself.

By the time Marianne comes to the back of the store, Gillian is shaking. Marianne hugs her. “Oh, honey,” she says. She takes the key and opens the door, hurrying her daughter in. The bathroom expels odiousness; there is toilet paper everywhere, and Marianne sees a shit smear on the floor and maybe on the wall. Gillian looks around, absorbing it all, and Marianne directs her to the toilet, which Gillian sits directly on after yanking down her panties without arranging any tissue on the seat — Marianne doesn’t say anything about it, but she thinks about it. If she’d had more time, she would have. The sound of Gillian’s pee is remarkably animalistic, and Marianne tries to think of the last time she was with someone like this, them openly urinating in front of her. This is my daughter, she thinks. Things like this happen with a daughter. She waits to feel a burst of love for this, but no such burst comes.

After Gillian rinses her hands in the sink, which provides no soap, above which there is no mirror, the two of them exit the bathroom.

“I just need to finish buying something before we go, okay?” Marianne says.

Gillian says, “I want to leave right now.”

“One minute.” She goes to buy cigarettes; Gillian’s eyes flick back and forth. She scratches her arms with both hands and suddenly sprints to the back of the store, grabs her candies, and hands them to Marianne. After Marianne takes them Gillian turns away, ignoring the transaction. Do you like candy? Marianne wants to ask. Tell me something true.

They return to the car. Gillian’s hives are intensifying, with a patch on her face growing hot, and then she says, “I said I wanted to get out of there. Why didn’t you listen?”

Marianne pulls out of the gas station parking lot and they are on the road again, the sun blurring their eyes. Both are so tall as to almost touch the top of the car — Gillian with her short hair, Marianne with her twisted and lazy updo. “I had to buy something,” she says, “because you used the bathroom. When you go to a store and use their bathroom, you need to spend money on something.”

“Why?”

“Because — bathrooms in stores are only for customers, honey. People who buy things.”

“Why?”

“That’s how they make money.” She looks over at Gillian. “I’m sorry. Try to take a nap. You can recline the seat and take a nap, okay?” Again, a lump like ice stuck too hard to swallow, making it hard to feel anything but fear. She is in over her head, she is sure of it, and yet she still reaches over and pats Gillian on the knee the way she would pat a strange dog. “Pull the lever on the side and lean it back.”

“I don’t want to stop again.”

“We don’t have to stop again.”

“I’ll hold it. I’ll go in the grass.”

“Okay.”

Gillian looks out the window. “There are no people like me, are there?” she says, thinking of William and the state he must be in now. Has he even left the house? How much food did she leave him? Why did she have to be the maternal one, the one who cared about their fate? She cranks down the window and out go the candies, ricocheting down the road. “I’m a monster,” she says.