“Please, Sandra. Not today.”
I’m trying to ignore Sandra’s voice. I am trying to ignore what is happening in the Yellow Room entirely, but the rhythm of grunts and groans, the tapping of the headboard, like a periodic spasm, keeps drawing me back.
There is no way to get around this fact, and no point beating around the bush: Minna is bedding the undertaker in the Yellow Room.
The room smells sweet and slightly rotten. It brings back memories of nausea, makes long-ago echoes in my head—Ed’s hand gripping the headboard, eyes squeezed shut in concentration, a bead of sweat tracing its way from his forehead to the tip of his nose. Knock, knock, knock. Iron and hardness; as though he could pound away all the past disappointments.
Ed closed his eyes and saw railroads. I, too, learned to escape. Maybe that’s why I was able to adapt to this new body so quickly. I severed the connection to the old one long ago.
“Do you know what her problem is? Nymphomania. Sex addiction.”
Sandra fancies herself an amateur psychologist because she did office work for a Dr. Rivers before he fired her for stealing pills. She has the names of over two hundred phobias memorized, as she is fond of reminding me, including the word geniophobia, which is a fear of chins. For the most part, I think that psychology is no better than phrenology.
However, in Minna’s case, Sandra might have a point.
The man was in the house less than twenty minutes before she had him stripped down to his socks and he was mounting her like a dog. That is, in fact, exactly what he looks like: his pale, mole-speckled back reminds me of the shaved, ridged spines of a greyhound.
Minna is closing her eyes. I can tell she doesn’t want to look at him. I used to close my eyes, too, with Ed. The undertaker is speaking, a low murmur of babble words, curses, and exclamations. Impossible to ignore, however disgusting it is.
I try to think my way into the tangle of wiring behind the radiator. Just a little spark . . . a little friction is all I need . . .
“I think I’ve underestimated the girl,” Sandra says. “It’s impressive, really. Just think about it. Urns to underwear in thirty minutes or less! It could be a TV series, don’t you think?”
For two days, Danny To p**n ycky has been ignoring Minna’s calls; she’s been walking around with her phone plastered to her palm, checking it constantly. Today, she has had better luck.
Are you really here to talk urn styles? Don’t you find it depressing? I could never do what you do for a living. I’m pleasure oriented—that’s what everyone says. I love to have a good time. Do you like to have a good time, Chris?
Now Minna is quiet—surprisingly so. Her face is perfectly composed—a look of relief—as though she has finally, after a period of exhaustion, been allowed to sleep. Christopher Deber, of Deber & Sons, does all the work, and I can’t help but see: the animal haunches rising and falling under the tented sheets.
Then: a gust of air, of Outside. A twinge in our side: the kitchen door opens, and Amy runs into the house.
“Oh, no,” I say. “No.”
Sandra says, “Here comes trouble.”
“Do something,” I say, as Amy heads for the stairs.
“Mommy!” Amy calls, but not loudly enough—not so loudly that she can be heard over Chris’s grunting.
“This is terrible,” Sandra says, but I can tell she doesn’t mean it.
Amy is on the stairs. Chris is saying justlikethathuhyoulikeitlikethat and Amy is running, running. I try to think myself past the steps, out of the banister, into her feet. Turn around, I want to scream. Go back.
“Mommy!” she singsongs. Not loudly enough. She is almost at the landing. Two more steps. One more minute. Chris lifts and thrusts, lifts and thrusts.
Then: a miracle. Amy trips. She stumbles on the last stair and falls flat on the landing, hard, on an elbow. Instantly, she begins to wail.
Minna snaps her eyes open. She launches Chris off her; he practically flies off the narrow bed, hitting the ground with a thud.
“What the—?”
“Shut up,” she says.
“Jesus, I was just about to—”
“I said shut up.” Her voice is low and urgent. She is looking not at him, but at the door, which is open a crack. “Get under the bed.”
In the hall, Amy picks herself up, sniffling. “Mommy,” she wails. For just a second, I have the overwhelming urge to reach up through the floorboards, to wrap myself around her.
“What?” Chris climbs to his feet, covering his Thing with one hand. His body is long and pale and lumpy, and his chest glistens with sweat. “I’m not going to—”
Minna looks at him. “Get under the bed,” she says calmly. “And don’t say a word. Don’t cough. Don’t f**king breathe. Do you understand me?”
“Christ,” he mutters. But he gets on the floor, lying down on his back. He has to uncup himself, and though I don’t want to see It, I have no choice: there it is, socklike and pathetic, already shriveling, the animal that leads men, hot and panting, through their lives. Then he wriggles, wormlike, under the bed, seeping his sweat into our floorboards, pricking us with the sparse constellation of hairs that grow from his shoulders to his waist. His heart stutters against the floorboards—staccato, irregular, bringing memories of other heartbeats. Ed, pounding; Maggie, sucking; Thomas, fitting his body to mine. Sandra, lying na**d on the bed, and a small brown spider traveling her neck, her chin, her open mouth, and disappearing finally into the darkness of her throat, where I could no longer see it.
For a second, I truly hate Minna.
“In here, sweetheart!” Minna is rearranging the duvet, so it pools over the side of the bed, concealing Chris from view. She tugs the sheets to her chin, sweeps a hand through her hair.
Amy comes to the door, sniffling. She stops when she sees her mother in bed. “What are you doing?” She wrinkles her nose. I wonder if she can smell it.
“Headache, precious,” Minna says, with an exaggerated sigh. “I was taking a nap.”
“I want to nap, too.” Amy bounds toward the bed.
Minna shoots out one hand. With the other, she keeps the sheets at her chin. “Don’t come in here,” she says, too sharply. Then, in a normal way, “I might have germs.”
Trenton comes in after Amy. He leans—or rather, collapses—against the doorway. “What’s up with you?” he says.
Minna flashes him a dirty look. “Migraine.” She reaches out and touches Amy’s chin. “Princess? How about you wait downstairs so I can talk to Uncle Trenton, okay?”