Anna Noyes - Goodnight, Beautiful Women

“How do you know him?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Up, down, and sideways. Tony’s my man. I’ve known that sucker every way there is.” I pictured her, stalking the streets behind Tony like a bodyguard. I pictured her kneeling down to kiss him. From a distance, they would look like two men kissing, like a man kissing a boy.

“But how’d you meet him?”

“Oh, a lot of strays come through here. I got a house, right? Kids that can’t take care of themselves. I had this kid here last month, real faggoty type — excuse me, I’m not prejudice, but this kid had tits. Real nice kid though, really sad. He wouldn’t even sleep on a bed, he just wrapped himself up in blankets on the floor. Kicked them all out though, to make way for my ma.”

“Am I one of your strays?” I said.

“I don’t know, are you?”

I could feel my eyes drifting all around. She wasn’t so much like my mom.

“You wanna put on some music?” I said.

“Not now, sweetie. With Tony sleeping.”

“I can take care of myself. Are you calling me sweetie because you think you have to take care of me?”

“Sure I do. But I called you sweetie because you’re sweet, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” I said, the room spinning. I got up and opened doors, trying to find the bathroom but I kept finding broom closets instead, and bedrooms that smelled of strange bodies, all the kids she’d kept and let loose. When I found the bathroom, I flipped at the switch but no light came on. I lay down on the cool tile, no lunch and no dinner, my stomach clenched and hot with scotch. Some time later she flicked on the light and sat beside me, pressing her warm palm to my forehead. I couldn’t move my legs to stand, or open my eyes. The room spun.

“You’re OK, little girl,” she said. “What did I do to you? Baby in the big city, and I get her wrecked.” She slung my arm over her shoulder. “Up we go, that’s it.”

I caught sight of my reflection, my face streaked with mascara. Every day I had nice, quiet thoughts. Kept my shadow self at bay. She was there, in the mirror. Frenzied and dangerous, her body a cloud of buzzing beetles.

“Let’s get you in bed, now,” she said, leading me by my shoulders through the house, which felt overly big, like a house in a dream, full of long, dark, cold hallways that went on and on. “Let’s give you Ma’s room. There we are,” she said. I lay back on the quilted bed, my throat and chest and stomach raw.

“You look like my mom,” I said. “I thought you were her.”

“Me?” She propped me up, made me take a sip of water. “That’s a kicker. How old do you think I am?”

“Mom’s age,” I said.

“How old are you, kiddo?”

“Twenty-three,” I said.

“Well I’m thirty-three. May not look it, but the city will do that. So if I’m your mom we’re in worse shape than I thought. Take another swallow.”

I was crying. “I wish it was you,” I said.

“It is me,” she said. “Cool it now, you’re OK.” But something was unlocking inside me. I’m a crying kind of drunk, fine one minute, undone the next by sadness that I can’t name, fierce and fast rising like floodwaters.

“Shut up.” She lay down next to me. “I’m right here. I’m her.” She put her hand on my waist. “I’m her. I’m right here.”

Sometime in the night I remember reaching for her. I was dreaming about her. In the dream Miss Mouse was tiny again, and Cheryl cupped her in her hands.

“Quit that out,” she said, turning away from me in her sleep, but she stayed, her warm back pressed against mine until morning.

I didn’t want to leave the bed. I wanted to live in Cheryl’s ma’s room forever. Cheryl was gone and it was bright out. The street below was alive with traffic sounds, but inside the bedroom was cool and quiet. There was a crucifix above the headboard, and lacquered paintings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary over the dresser. The dresser was covered in dolls and doilies. The bedroom was different from the rest of the house, and I wondered if it was done up to make Cheryl’s ma feel at home. I felt like my hangover was terminal, and I would never feel like myself again.

I found Tony in the kitchen, eating a plate of sausages with a knife. His hair was slicked back neatly, but his face looked warmed over, gray circles and bags under his eyes, deep wrinkles, and I realized he was older than I’d thought, forty maybe, fifty even.

“You look like hell,” he said.

“You, too,” I said.

“Well I’ve been there. What’s your excuse?” He speared a sausage. “Cheryl’s at work. Left you a twenty in case, and some lemon bars in that Ziploc. Or you can stay, she said. Woman’s a saint.” I made myself some tea, and held its warmth in my hands, watching the steam. “A saint,” he said again. “I swear I’d be lost if she hadn’t picked me,” he said. “I’d be a goner.”

A little girl padded into the kitchen. She had on one enormous bunny slipper, and she skidded across the linoleum to the fridge, pushing off with her bare foot, using her single slipper like an ice skate. She took out orange juice, drank from the mouth of the carton.

“Dalia, this is a nice lady. Nice lady, this is Dalia.”

“She’s your daughter?” I said.

“Last I checked. Cheryl’s and mine.”

She skated over to Tony and buried her face in the front of his shirt. “Come here, booger,” he said, squeezing her. She had a mess of dark hair. I reached out and put my hand on the back of her head. There were snarls nested under her curls.

“Cheryl’s at work?” I said.

“Yep. Lobster pound, twelve hours a day. She’s the one who sticks those little bands on ‘em. Those suckers cut her up good.” For all I’d inspected her, I’d never noticed her hands.

It wasn’t until I’d paid the taxi driver at the hotel that I realized I didn’t know where Cheryl’s house was, couldn’t even remember which station she was close to. Her train was on the way to Braintree, I know, because I had pictured a brain, its folds like a winding maze, gently afloat in clear, pink water.

I never found Cheryl again, but I looked for her — broad shoulders like my mom, my mom’s anxious laugh, her army green — and sometimes, many times, I thought for a second I spotted her. I searched the faces of the women in the motel parking lot by my apartment, the hookers and drug addicts. They stared right back like they knew me, all thinking I wanted something from them, all of them familiar.

I moved back to my hometown with my husband, which was my first mistake. Actually at that point he wasn’t my husband, though we’re married now. I wanted to be claimed as a wife for the sake of my own tenuous survival. In those early days in Maine, I often envisioned walking into the bay, but that sounds more poetic and energetic than what I really felt. Mostly I wanted to slip down the shower drain or hibernate for the next five years until I was prepared to be a wife and mother, and was used to the fact that all my friends lived elsewhere and it was just me and Bruce making meal after meal and eating them on the couch for the rest of our lives.

Right after the move I started to wash my face with oil, thinking that since I was back in rural Maine I should milk goats and throw away my harsh facial soap. The oil cleansing covered my face with tiny bumps that I spent hours researching online. My research suggested that the phase I was in was generally considered a purging phase so I kept washing with the oil through fall, until the texture of my skin was completely altered. In my phone’s photo album, hundreds of pictures of my own face, taken to document the purge, replaced pictures of friends and beaches and Bruce and me on mountain summits.