Lauren Holmes - Barbara the Slut and Other People

Patsy brushes me. “Pretty pretty Princess,” she says.

“I thought she was my fucking Luis,” says Mike.

“Language,” says Casey. “But you’ll find another Luis. One who isn’t a lying, cheating whore.”

“She’s not a whore,” says Mike. “Don’t call her that.”

T-Rex has many snacks. We eat them together. “This is a Teddy Graham,” he says, “this is a banana, this is blubbery yogurt, this is a Starburst.”

“Aren’t you glad you didn’t ask her to marry you?” says Casey.

“Maybe,” says Mike. “I don’t know.”

Casey makes a noise. “God, I’m so allergic to her.”

“I know,” says Mike, “I’m sorry. We’ll leave tomorrow. I was just going crazy there.”

“I know,” says Casey. “It’s okay.”

I sleep in a new bed with Mike.

• • •

We are home. Jenna is here. She is sad.

Mike and I are not sad. I wag my tail.

“I want to try to work it out,” says Mike.

“Oh my god,” says Jenna. She squeezes Mike.

We are in bed. Mike and Jenna move around. I close my eyes.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” says Mike.

I get up and move to the space between them.

• • •

I sleep between the humans every night.

• • •

Jenna is gone. I am in the bed with Mike. His arms are around me. He squeezes me and unsqueezes me. I sigh a deep sigh and close my eyes.

When I got into grad school, my boyfriend told me that we were at a crossroads and we needed to take stock of our relationship and decide whether to continue together or separately. While I tried to think of what to say, he explained that his vote was for separately.

I quit my job and moved back to Massachusetts. I moved into my old bedroom at my dad’s house because I didn’t have time to find a summer job or a sublet. My dad felt bad for me and gave me a talk about how this was an opportunity to center myself. He said he would pay my expenses until I left for school in August, which was really nice and kind of depressing.

The expenses he covered were: the minimum payment on my student loan bills, a monthly membership to a darkroom, unlimited film, and whatever I needed from the grocery store. What I wanted most from the grocery store was ice cream, but it turned out a person could not “need” sweets, or magazines, or makeup. I also wanted to buy breakup underwear, but I assumed that was not a need either.

I wasn’t really thinking about when I was going to need the breakup underwear, but I wanted to have it on hand. Then the second week I was home, I went to the art supply store and ran into the boy I loved in high school, Silas. I wasn’t supposed to love him because my friend Kat loved him, so I loved him from far away like all of the other art girls and drama girls and drug girls. He was beautiful and brooding and he loved none of us back.

I did get to hang out with Silas a couple of times in high school, but I didn’t think he knew who I was. Once, I went with Kat and two of our other friends to get weed from him, which was just an excuse for Kat to see him. Silas’s parents were out, and we stayed to smoke with him and two of his friends. Silas and Kat coupled up right away and the other guys checked us out. One chose one of my friends, and the other chose the other. I was pretty sure none of them even saw me there, especially not Silas.

But when I saw him at the art store he said, “Deaf Girl!” and then, “Oh shit, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s Jane.” Deaf Girl was my behind-the-back nickname in high school, even though I could hear fine with my hearing aids.

Silas was working in the framing department and I needed mats cut. He hadn’t aged especially well — it looked like maybe he had moved on to harder drugs before eventually cleaning up — but my heart beat faster anyway. He seemed like he was doing fine now. I wondered if he thought I was doing fine. I hoped I looked like I was doing awesome.

Silas cut my mats for free and said it was about to be his lunch break, and asked if I wanted to get burritos across the street. I didn’t have any cash, but he said it was his treat. We didn’t have a lot to say to each other and I was preoccupied by my bare legs sticking to the booth, but my heart didn’t stop its beating and I agreed to go to a party with him later that week.

When we had sex it was urgent. He held my hand at the party and started sucking on my fingers in the car, and by the time we got upstairs to his apartment I was hotter and wetter than I had ever been. Later I wondered if it was the kind of sex you could only have if you had been waiting for it since high school. Obviously Silas hadn’t been waiting for it since high school, but he knew how to make it seem like he had been.

I started going to Silas’s apartment almost every night. He only had a couch, a TV, and a bed, but it was clean and I liked it there. I couldn’t explain it, but all I wanted to do was be in his bed and let him do whatever he wanted to me. Maybe I could have explained it through the high school crush, or through the getting dumped, but it seemed like it was more, or maybe less, than that. Like a purely and exceptionally physical thing.

• • •

In July my dad’s girlfriend asked me if I wanted to babysit for her coworker’s kid. I didn’t. I had promised myself I would never babysit again, three separate times: once when I graduated from high school, once when I graduated from college, and then again three months after that, after I spent the summer babysitting. I meant it every time, but I really meant it the last time. At the end of that summer I had a meeting with myself and told myself it was time to be an adult.

And now it was almost two years after that last promise, and I had spent the past eight weeks living at home, asking my dad for cash and having him ask me if all the time I was spending at Silas’s apartment was really helping me center myself. So it was hard to turn down the babysitting job.

And when I hesitated, my dad’s girlfriend smacked her forehead and said, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I forgot! The kid is hearing impaired!”

“Oh,” I said. “Great.” I still didn’t want to do it but I wondered if that meant I should. It did seem like a big coincidence, and my dad’s girlfriend seemed to think it was some kind of fate. Maybe I was supposed to meet the kid and be his hearing-impaired role model or something. Show him that I turned out fine, awesome. If that was the case, I guessed the babysitting wouldn’t kill me.

That weekend I went to meet them. The mom, Susanna, let me in, and said the kid was still sleeping. There didn’t seem to be a dad there. The mom was older than I expected, maybe mid-forties, and she wasn’t unpretty but she looked kind of spent. Their apartment was the first floor of a small house. She led me through the hall and the kitchen and out to the back porch. She brought me a glass of water.

“I can’t believe you’re hearing impaired,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known on the phone.”

“I do pretty well,” I said.

“Your speech is almost totally normal,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Timmy and I are so excited to have a hearing-impaired babysitter.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So, you’re just in the area for the summer?”

“Yeah, I’m going back to school in the fall.”

She didn’t ask for what, and I didn’t tell her. Whenever I tell people I take pictures, they say they do too, and want to show me the same picture that everybody has of whatever bridge in Venice. Either that or they try to hire me for their sister’s stepkid’s wedding, and I have to explain that I don’t do weddings, like I’m too good for them or something. I actually think I’m not good enough for weddings — there are too many people, and everything happens so fast.