Calf Read online

  It clicked, but nothing happened. She pressed again, and again nothing happened.

  NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo.

  Valerie started to cry. She had lost. She looked over at the bed. Oh god oh god oh god oh god. Her little girl was floating away. Her baby had drowned.

  Valerie crawled up the wall until she was standing on her unsteady feet. She had to get out. She couldn’t be in this room. She used the wall for support and made her way to the door. As soon as she set foot back in the hallway, the phone alarm stopped.

  She bumped along the hallway wall back to her bedroom. Reality was cruelly rushing back through the quiet din of the day. The silence was smacking her in the face. Her angels were nowhere to be found. They had cut her off. They had tricked her. Valerie caught sight of herself in her dresser mirror. The left side of her body was covered in blood. Her shoulder had been ripped open and her arm, which she could no longer feel, hung heavily at her side.

  The leather case was still open. She could try to reload the gun, but she didn’t have the slightest idea how. She knew her husband had long since emptied the bathroom of anything more dangerous than nail clippers. He kept the pills under lock and key. He used an electric razor and made her switch to Nair. There was nothing in there and she knew that if she went downstairs some neighbor or postman would see her and want to save her. No, she would have to wait. She would have to wait until all the blood flowed out of her body. She would die. She would just have to wait.

  Valerie crawled back into her unmade bed and waited.

  Josie tucked her tennis racquet in her armpit and dialed the number again. She was already late. She had a small moment of hope in the silent few seconds after the last button was pushed, but as soon as she gave up and said to herself, “It’s still going to be busy,” the signal blared in her ear. She hung up the phone, frustrated. She knew Valerie was home because her car was parked outside. Josie tugged her visor cap over her forehead and marched out the front door, pom-poms sticking out of her sneakers giving her an added huff.

  Josie walked across the lawn that separated their houses and hopped up onto Valerie’s front porch. The least she can do is answer the door, Josie thought, even if she’s canceling. She probably isn’t even on the phone. She probably took it off the hook and is passed out upstairs with all the curtains drawn.

  Josie rang the bell. In the glass next to the door she saw Pudding scamper down the stairs. The dog ran over and scratched at the glass, black eyes opened wide. Valerie probably forgot to walk her. Poor thing needed to go. That was Valerie these days, head in the clouds. Maybe she was having an affair. I’m probably the only one who hasn’t had an affair, Josie thought. I wouldn’t even know how to go about it.

  She gave the bell one more ring. The dog whined pathetically, but Valerie, wherever she was, wasn’t moving. So much for tennis doubles. Josie sighed and slung her racquet over her shoulder. As she turned away, Pudding jumped her paws high up on the glass. Please don’t leave me, she seemed to be saying. Poor thing.

  Josie walked back to her house and grabbed her sports bag. It was too late to call Meredith, who was bringing her friend visiting from West Berlin. They would just have to rotate singles and complain about how Valerie managed to stay so thin even though she never played anymore. She never swam either. She would just sit by the pool in a lounge chair wearing sunglasses and smoking cigarettes, book opened to the same page all afternoon.

  “You know,” Meredith said, “she has some problems.”

  Meredith could play tennis and carry on a bilingual conversation at the same time. Josie had rotated out and Meredith played her friend, who Josie now remembered was Swiss because she and Meredith would give the score in French.

  “Like what?” Josie asked from the sidelines.

  “You know, nervous problems, she sees that shrink.”

  Meredith said it the way one might mention how an acquaintance recently had their appendix out. Or maybe a little more than that. Maybe more like someone used to be an alcoholic and that’s why they ordered club soda all the time.

  Meredith was currently sleeping with a married man, someone in the State Department. It was her vicarious revenge against her husband who left her after having an affair with a Congressional page, a girl still in her teens. Meredith thought the State Department was glamorous. International intrigue. Meredith used to say she would never date a lobbyist or an activist. They would always leave you for someone who believed in them more.

  Josie couldn’t manage to respond with anything more than, “Oh.” She wanted to change the subject, but she couldn’t think of anything to ask Meredith’s friend and she felt left out because she didn’t speak French. She twiddled with the pom-poms on her socks, something she kept telling Gretchen not to do. She was always pulling pom-pom socks out of the dryer with the furry white balls hanging on by a single thread.

  “And she had that nervous breakdown a couple years ago. That time Carl told everyone she was in Europe for two months.”

  People often said “nervous breakdown” as if it were something that happened to everyone sooner or later, the same as a really bad flu or strep throat. Josie wondered if it was more like chicken pox, if you felt safer after you’ve already had it.

  Josie lost her singles game.

  Valerie’s car was still sitting there when Josie got home. Meredith pulled up at the same time. Josie motioned to Valerie’s car. Meredith shrugged.

  Josie walked into her kitchen and tossed her tennis things on the table. She dialed Valerie’s number one more time, but she knew it would still be busy even before she heard the signal.

  Gretchen wandered in, home from school, without saying a word and barely acknowledging Josie’s existence. She opened the refrigerator and emerged with a can of Fresca.

  “Hey,” Josie said, pretending she was her daughter’s best friend, “did you see Kirin in school today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Typical, Josie thought. This was all she could get out of Gretchen these days.

  “So, you didn’t see her?”

  “It’s not like she’s in my class.”

  True, Josie thought. Maybe I should just let it go. She stared out her window where she could see the back of Valerie’s car through the hedges. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing.

  The problem was, Josie couldn’t stand loose ends. She hated busy signals. She was the kind of person who would keep calling over and over again, but never had the nerve to ask the operator to make an emergency breakthrough. And now she couldn’t call again with Gretchen standing right there.

  Josie walked outside; she’d give the door another try. Valerie can’t sleep forever. And that bell was loud. A good old-fashioned ding-dong.

  She rang the bell. Pudding scampered down the stairs, this time faster. She pawed at the glass and her mouth opened as if she were trying to relearn how to bark. When Josie leaned over to ring the bell again, the dog jumped. Please don’t go, please don’t go, she seemed to be saying. Poor thing. She probably hasn’t been out all day.

  “She’s sick.”

  Josie spun around. It was one of the carpool boys from the swim team. He peeled a layer of fruit-flavored skin from its plastic wrapper and attacked it with his tongue. His skinny ten-year-old eating habits intimidated Josie. She looked down at her white tennis shoes and by the time she mustered up the first syllable of a response, the boy had walked away.

  The dog was still at the door. Josie noticed something on her paw. It looked like blood. The poor thing was hurt.

  Josie walked back to her house. Gretchen’s ear was glued to the kitchen phone.

  “Gretchen?” Josie tried to get her attention, but Gretchen wasn’t giving it.

  “Gretchen!” Josie resorted to the stern maternal voice that made being thirty-eight years old seem quite severe.

  “What? I’m on the phone!”

  “Was Kirin at swim practice this morning?”

  “I don’t know.”

&nbs
p; “Was she or wasn’t she? I’m only asking you to remember something from this morning.”

  “I don’t remember. It was early.”

  “Did Valerie drive you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was Kirin with her?”

  Gretchen scowled. She was beaten. A rare victory for Josie.

  “No. Valerie said she was sick.”

  Something could be wrong. Something could be terribly wrong. At the very least, Valerie could be with Kirin at the doctor’s and the dog could have gotten in some kind of trouble. Josie was sincerely worried, but she also secretly cherished the excitement. This was as close to adventure as Josie got. After all, she wasn’t having sex with men in the State Department or members of the foreign press. She didn’t do cocaine and she wasn’t campaigning for the ERA or No Nukes. She wasn’t a liberal or a radical or a Reaganite. She was normal. And because she was normal, her days were monotonized into everyday disappointments. She got used to them and stopped feeling like her life was slipping away into boredom. She stopped questioning things about the house, her daughter, giving up her career, or restaining the back deck. If this dog was the one iota of adventure Josie was going to get, she was taking it.

  Josie walked out of her house, pom-poms still perky, and hiked across the kelly-green front lawns down to Meredith’s house. Meredith had a key, Josie remembered her saying once off-handedly. She must have had it since the first nervous breakdown.

  Valerie knew she was dying. It was just taking so long, much longer than she imagined. She kept falling asleep, each time hoping she would never wake up. She couldn’t feel her arm anymore. It had stopped hurting. Maybe this was how death was, she thought. Maybe one part of your body dies off first and you slowly drop away, piece by piece. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, she awakened with another part of her body gone. The angels were slowly erasing her with giant black crayons. They had such tiny hands. It would take them a while. But they were helping her.

  From somewhere else, a doorbell rang.

  Valerie instinctively sat up, like a robot whose job it was to answer the door. Her head filled with a thousand little lights and she wavered back and forth before falling down to the bed again. It all rushed back to her. Stupid, stupid, don’t get the door. Don’t let them know you’re here. Don’t let them get to you before you’re gone.

  She heard footsteps and what was left of her body stiffened on the bed. Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me. Not yet.

  The footsteps stopped at her bedroom doorway. She tried not to move. The footsteps weren’t walking away. Valerie rolled her eyes to the far corners of their sockets to see who it was. Her neck hurt too much to turn her head.

  It was the dog. She was staring up at Valerie, unable to cross the imaginary line into the bedroom. She had been trained that way. Carl didn’t want dog hair getting all over their clothes. He had wanted the line to be drawn at the bottom of the stairs, that way the dog wouldn’t come upstairs at all. But Valerie had thought that was unfair to Kirin, so the only off-limits room was their bedroom. It had been harder to train her that way.

  Pudding stood at the bedroom entrance. Concerned. Worried. She needed to go out. Valerie should have left some newspapers out downstairs, but she didn’t think of it.

  The doorbell rang again and Pudding hopped away. It rang one more time, and then the noise, finally, ceased.

  Pudding came back and stood in the doorway. Whine whine whine. Valerie could hear her wander down the hall and back again. Whine whine whine, some more. Just leave me in peace, dog. Just let me go.

  Valerie careened her eyes around again, just to make sure the dog was alone, that she hadn’t brought anyone with her. As soon as Valerie met the dog’s eyes, Pudding started to whine again. With her one good hand Valerie covered her face. I’m hanging on too much, she thought, I’m looking too much. It’s not helping. She had an urge to check the clock, but she thought, no. Don’t do it. You’ll be like the dog. Painfully aware of minutes not ticking away, time not passing. Who knows how long it might take? She’d heard of people lost in the woods going days without food and water before dying of exposure. She only had until her husband got home. Probably nine o’clock. Maybe ten. There was a meeting tonight. Or a dinner. There was something.

  She needed to stop thinking. Thinking was keeping her tied to the Earth. It was causing her to reemerge after the angels had taken such care to erase her.

  Her hand slid off of her eyes and rested just under her nose. She thought that without her thumb, her four fingers looked like the feathers of a tiny wing.

  An angel took a break from her coloring and wiped her brow.

  “How much longer?” Valerie asked.

  I don’t know, the angel said back. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

  We’re here for you, the other one said. We’re doing our best.

  “I know. I know you are,” Valerie said. “I’m just worried. Maybe I should get up. Maybe Kirin is still here too.”

  No, don’t do that. That’s not a good idea.

  “Why not?”

  Don’t worry. She’s gone. She’s waiting for you. It was fast. In her sleep. The best way.

  Valerie felt herself start to cry.

  “What if,” she said, feeling her face quiver, “what if I don’t make it?”

  The angels stopped moving their crayons and arrived at a perfect stillness. Then they moved only their eyes and looked at Valerie. They were at a loss for words. They moved close, very close to her face, and peered into her. Valerie thought they might help by smothering her with their wings, but they retreated back to her limbs and looked intently at each other. After a moment, they picked up their crayons and started coloring again, but their hearts weren’t into it. They looked as if they were doing it just for show. Just to make her happy.

  “If she’s gone, could I see her like you?”

  The angels squinted at her quizzically. They didn’t understand what she meant. She meant that if Kirin were gone, could she see her here, like them. As an angel.

  The angels smiled to themselves like she was a child asking an amusingly naïve question. It doesn’t work that way, they said.

  Valerie was starting to think that maybe they weren’t her friends after all. They were turning into nasty little girls. Like the ones Kirin would insist on inviting to her slumber parties. Perhaps they weren’t angels after all. They could be spies. Like narcs. Recruited to spy on her because she believed in angels and they looked like angels.

  “Prove it,” Valerie spat out, surprised at the forcefulness of her lips.

  Prove what?

  “Prove that you are who you say you are.”

  Who did we say we were?

  They were already giving her the runaround. Valerie was starting to lose it. Maybe they weren’t erasing her. Maybe they were sucking everything out of her brain with tiny instruments that looked like crayons. Maybe they were implanting electrodes under her skin. Maybe they made her misfire on purpose. Maybe they will replace her arm with a bionic one that they can control and they’ll make her go around killing people. And then, when she is all used up, and they have no more use for her, they will dump her somewhere. A labor camp. Siberia. Some place like that.

  She wasn’t asking for much. Just a little reassurance.

  But the angels weren’t talking.

  “Who are you?” Valerie whispered.

  They didn’t hear her. Or they pretended not to.

  “Who are you?” she said louder.

  Quiet! one of them said, and they started coloring faster, pressing hard into her skin with their waxy crayons.

  The doorbell rang again.

  Valerie made a noise in her throat. The angels gave her a look. Shut up, they were saying. It’s too late now. What are you going to do now? You fucked up. You fucked everything up. Firing with your toe? Who does that? That was a stupid idea.

  “You wouldn’t help me!”

  The doorbell rang again.

&nb
sp; Keep it down!

  We couldn’t help you. We couldn’t go in there. You had to. We helped you with everything else. We helped you plan everything. We gave you the idea. We told you today was a good day. We offered you moral support. We were good friends. You only had to do that one little thing by yourself. That one little thing. Everyone has a role in the plan and that was yours. And you fucked it up! Now here we are and we have to clean up this mess. You’ll be lucky if you get out of this dead.

  Valerie was mad. She felt like calling out to the person at the door, just to spite the little angels.

  We know what you’re thinking, they said. Don’t even try it.

  Valerie looked back at them. She hated them. She wanted them to stop. She wanted to die on her own. She wanted, at least, to accomplish something on her own in what was left of her life.

  The angels shook their heads. You are no longer in charge, they said.

  Valerie started to cry.

  Not again, the angels said. Don’t be such a baby.

  I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!

  You’re so spoiled, one of them said. You think you get everything you want. This is business. It isn’t about you.

  Valerie felt like she had heard this all before.

  If I am going to have to wait, Valerie thought, I want to be alone.

  Oh, the angels said, is that it? They dropped their crayons, which disappeared into the puddle of blood.

  Should we go away now?

  “Yes, go away.”

  No last requests?

  “Just go! Go away! Get out!”

  They didn’t say anything more. They simply stood up, brushed off their hands, and melted into vapor. And they were gone. They were still watching, but Valerie couldn’t see them anymore. She used to think she needed them, but now she realized that she didn’t want them around. And she didn’t want them where she was going. She would make new friends. She didn’t need a beach house full of ghosts.