The Heaven of Animals Read online

  He’d waited a month, then called. He got the machine with his voice still on it, and he left a message. Maybe he’d waited too long. Maybe, waiting, he’d hurt her feelings. But he’d been afraid to call without good news. Because, if he called with good news—proof he could get a job, hold it down, contribute to society and all that—maybe he could make her see he’d change, that, short of being the kind of happy she wanted him to be, he could at least be useful.

  He left her his new number and the address to his apartment. He told her what he’d been up to, told her work was good—a lie—and the city was safe—another lie. He told her how, just that morning, a quail had crossed the parking lot, identical brood trailing her like the miniature middles of a Russian nesting doll. Kate loved nesting dolls, had kept a dozen on the mantel in their home. He talked until he heard a beep, then called back and picked up where he’d left off. He told her everything he could think to say except that he missed her, which he did, terribly.

  “Call me,” he said at the end.

  He waited another month, then, worried she’d missed the first messages, called again. This time, the voice on the machine was hers. She was going by her maiden name, and the new outgoing message was no-nonsense. Leave your name and number, and I’ll call you back, it said like a reprimand.

  He gave her his information again, then he gave her more news. He’d gotten a raise, he said—big lie. There was a chance he might be transferred to Atlanta—big, giant lie. He said he missed her, that he should have told her that the last time he called. Anyway, he wanted her to know just how much he missed her, how he didn’t care for this arrangement, how, before a year was up and the divorce became final, they might consider other options available to them. Could she call him? Please? And soon?

  A year went by.

  He called, left his message at the beep. If he could just have a minute of her time. All he really wanted was to say that he was sorry. He was so sorry, and, even if what they’d shared wasn’t happiness, exactly, then at least it was something familiar and good, certainly better than what he had now, which was nothing. Maybe, if it wasn’t too much to ask, maybe she would take him back and everything could return to the way it had been. Better than the way it had been. He would try harder, no matter what trying harder meant. He would work. He would take her places. He would listen when she talked. He really would try this time, if only she’d give him the chance. If it wasn’t too much to ask.

  The next week, the papers arrived.

  He didn’t sign them. By now, he knew enough to know it was over. He only wanted to talk to her. He thought, if he held back on the signing, she’d be forced to call, but the only calls that came were from her lawyer, then his.

  He signed.

  “Now leave her alone,” his lawyer said. “Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t give her reason to request a restraining order.”

  This seemed, to Brig, excessive. Had he missed something? Was this necessary? Restraint? Restraint from what? Brig had never raised a hand to her. He’d never raised his voice. He’d seldom raised his ass from the couch, and that had been the problem. But he’d outgrown that. A year in the desert, and he was a new man. He hoped he was.

  He hoped that this, all of this—the threat of restraint, Kate’s refusal to take his calls—was, in fact, proof of her affection, proof that maybe she cared too much, found the pain too acute to keep him in her life. And, if it was easier to cut him out of her life altogether, that didn’t mean she didn’t still love him. He believed this. He had to. This abiding belief kept him off the couch.

  Still, he wanted—needed—to hear Kate’s voice one more time. But, when he called, the number had been disconnected.

  Two more years, and word came from his parents that Kate was engaged. The guy was a big-shot lawyer. The announcement had filled a quarter page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

  “I’m sorry,” his mother said, but the conversation was cut short by a knock on the door. The woman in the next apartment wanted to know if Brig might be able to watch her cat.

  . . .

  They sat on the bed, then lay down. There was one pillow, and Brig let Lily have it. She stretched out on her back and studied the ceiling. He lay on his side and studied her. Her real arm was closest to him, and he wondered whether she’d picked her place on the bed on purpose, whether she lay on her back to shield the prosthesis from view.

  “Why Brig?” she asked.

  “Family name,” he said.

  “As in, a family of shipbuilders?”

  “Brig’s short for Brigham, as in Brigham Young, as in Mormon. And, before you ask, my dad had one wife. Like most Mormons. Just one. That fucking TV show’s got everyone confused.”

  “I love that show,” Lily said, and, when Brig gave her the eyebrow, she shrugged and said, “I’m kidding. I don’t watch TV.”

  He shook his head. “Who are you?”

  “Just a girl,” she sang, “just an ordinary girl.” She laughed at the ceiling.

  He wanted to tell her to knock it off. He wanted to say: For one second, be serious. But he also wanted to be inside of her. Or, he thought he did. Was he scared? He guessed he was. It wasn’t that it had been so long, though it had been. And it wasn’t that she was so young, though she was. It was something to do with the fact that the only woman he’d been with was Kate. The measuring stick of his love life came down to Kate, and sleeping with Lily meant doubling that count. Maybe he should have started sleeping with women right after the divorce, but that wasn’t the way he’d been raised. No matter that he no longer believed in the way he’d been raised—some things you couldn’t shake. And say he did it? Say he slept with Lily? How many women would he have to sleep with before each time didn’t feel like it meant so damned much?

  “You want to know who I am?” she asked.

  He did.

  “I started out a gymnast, and now I’m a diver. I’m an A student. I like birds, and I’ve kept the ticket stub to every movie I’ve ever seen: a hundred and forty-two—a hundred and thirty if you don’t count the ones I saw more than once. My parents are Baptist. They voted for Bush. Twice. They try to get everyone to convert. But, wherever they go, Brazil or Belize or wherever, they bring food, books and maps, crayons for the kids, so that’s cool. Sometimes people go along with it just for the food at the end. You can tell.”

  Brig’s parents had been strict, but not mission-oriented. Either you were Mormon or you weren’t, and God have mercy on those who were not—that was their position.

  “My parents actually worry about them,” she said, “about the ones who play along, then go back to worshiping the river gods, or whatever. One time I said, ‘So what?’ I meant it as in ‘At least you’re helping them out.’ But my parents don’t think that way. They don’t care about saving lives. They care about saving souls. I got a month in my room for that one.”

  “They lock you in your room?”

  “Not literally. I just mean they grounded me for a month. No phone, no friends.”

  She pushed her hair out of her face, let her hand fall on his leg and rest there.

  “But you know what that’s like,” she said. “You must.”

  He couldn’t deny it. On the more absurd end of the spectrum, he’d once been grounded two weeks for trying Coke at a friend’s party.

  “You’ve done coke?” Her eyes widened at the ceiling. She looked so impressed, he almost let it go, but he couldn’t.

  “Coca-Cola,” Brig said. “Soda.”

  “Mormons don’t drink soda?”

  “Or coffee, or tea. Tequila’s right out.”

  Lily laughed. “Holy shit.” Her hand moved up his thigh.

  “And your tattoo?” he asked.

  “They’ve never seen it,” she said.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Speedo covers it. Plus, we don’t show
much skin in my family.”

  Brig’s either. His parents had been big on modesty, pants for Dad and high necklines for Mom. First time he’d brought Kate home, she’d worn a blouse that made good use of her cleavage. They’d said nothing, his folks, but he’d sensed the disapproval in their thin smiles.

  “Your parents,” he said, “if they knew you were here?”

  “Oh, they’d shoot you,” she said. “I mean Thou shalt not kill, sure, but let’s be honest. They’d shoot you dead.”

  “And what about you?” he said.

  “What about me?”

  “You buy into it, all the God stuff?”

  Lily seemed to think on this. Her hand worked its way up his leg until her fingers found the drawstring of his shorts.

  “I do,” she said. “Not the way my parents do, but I do. It all just seems too big for there not to be one.”

  She pulled, and the bow he’d tied came undone at his waist.

  “I mean, just because my parents have this kind of messed-up take on it doesn’t mean there can’t be a God. And just because I do stupid stuff doesn’t mean I don’t want someone up there watching me do it.”

  Her knuckles were at his navel, the back of her hand turning slow circles into his abdomen.

  “It’s just, the arm,” he said. He was feeling dizzy, euphoric. He felt the way you felt coming in out of a cold rain, waiting for the shower to warm. “If it were me . . .”

  “It’s not you,” she said. There was a line, and he’d put one foot over it.

  “Besides,” she said, “you’ve got your own shit to worry about. Don’t bring me into your shit.”

  “You don’t know anything about my shit,” he said, and the warmth was suddenly gone, the warmth and the hand, the slow circles setting his skin aflame. She turned onto her side. She faced him, now, watched him with the same intensity she’d been giving the ceiling.

  “You’re angry,” she said. “You still love her, and you’re mad at God.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been mad at God a long time. Kate couldn’t change that. She thought she could, but she couldn’t.”

  He reached for her hand, but her arm was beneath her. If he wanted a hand now, it would have to be plastic.

  “Anyway, I’m done with God.”

  Lily smiled. “But what if it’s not God you’re mad at?” she said. “What if the thing you’re mad at is this idea of God, this really bad idea you got from other people. What if God exists? What if God is love? Aren’t you going to feel stupid later?”

  “I don’t believe in afterlives,” he said. He wanted to, but getting rid of hell had meant jettisoning heaven. He’d practiced the rhetorical backflips of one without the other, but what was grace without justice? Halos begged firebrands, fangs wings.

  Better the ground. Better the great, white blank.

  “You believe in heaven?” he said.

  Lily turned onto her back, and again her hand was at his waist.

  “I have to,” she said.

  She slipped her hand down his pants, took hold, let go.

  “You have protection?” she said.

  . . .

  In the bathroom, he braced himself against the sink. His head spun, and he wondered whether he was coming down with something, whether the tequila might come back up. He shut his eyes and opened them. He splashed water on his face. The comb she’d used sat on the countertop, and he pulled a black hair from it. He took hold of each end and stretched the hair to its full length, two, maybe two and a half feet. He thought of flossing with it, then dropped the hair into the sink. He turned on the faucet, and the hair curled in the water, then slipped down the drain. With Kate, he’d been forever snaking the bathroom sink, pulling fat, globby hunks of hair like drowned mice from the drains, the smell so bad he often gagged. And it occurred to him that, since Kate, he hadn’t needed a snake. Three years, and not once had his drain clogged.

  He opened the medicine cabinet and pulled down the condoms. He’d bought the box before his last date, but she hadn’t hinted, and he doubted he would have gone through with it even if she had. He pulled one end of the accordion from the box and tore along the perforated line. He had to check the expiration date. They were good for another month. He weighed the packet in his hand, then dropped it back into the box and returned the box to the cabinet. The cabinet rattled when it closed.

  He lowered the toilet’s lid and sat. Lily’s underwear hung overhead, dripping, and he pulled the bra down. The cups were small: 32B. Each cup was the size and shape of the paper masks he used to wear to mow the lawn. He fitted one to his face and breathed in. The cup smelled like chlorine and something else, something floral and inviting. He dropped the bra. Her towel hung from the bar on the wall, and he stood and pressed his whole head into it. He moaned. The tears came and the towel ate them.

  He went back to the room. She’d gotten under the covers, hair on the pillow like a nest for her head. On the floor, crumpled beside the bed, were the clothes he’d given her. She’d pulled the top sheet to her neck, but just on one side, toga-style. One arm rested above the covers, muscled, welcoming, lightly haired. The prosthesis was hidden from view. She’d seemed so comfortable with him, with her nakedness, right up to the moment they’d climbed into bed.

  He stood at the footboard. A foot stuck out from the covers, toes curled, nails unpainted, perfect as pearls.

  He touched the smallest toe, then brought his hand to the back of his neck.

  What was she doing here? How had he let it get this far?

  “Don’t hate me,” he said.

  The girl’s face scrunched up.

  “I want you to promise me something,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me you won’t do this again.”

  She sat up, and the covers fell to her waist. The gecko seemed to have grown, seemed to be scaling her pale hip. The prosthesis hung at her side. Stretch marks radiated from her nipples like the wavy rays of a child’s hand-drawn sun. “From coming in too fast,” Kate had explained. She’d had them too.

  “I’m not a child,” Lily said.

  He wanted to say he was no less a child than her. He wanted to say that adults were just kids who’d made up their minds. Instead, he said, “I know that.”

  “You aren’t protecting me from anything,” she said. “This isn’t my first time.”

  “I didn’t think it was,” he said. But he had wondered. He’d taken her for Lolita, then the arm was in the air, and, catching it, he hadn’t known what to think. Perhaps he’d flattered himself thinking she might want him for her first.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “Jesus,” she said. She threw the covers back, and the fullness of her nudity shocked him anew. Her body was a coil, muscled, marble-smooth.

  “You . . . you look just like her,” he said.

  Lily was quiet a minute. She looked down, taking in the length of herself, then met his eyes.

  “That must be fucked up for you,” she said.

  Brig looked away. He moved to the bedroom window, put his fingers between two miniblinds, and scissored them open. The lot was lamplit. He hoped, any second, to see Boots cross the long shadows of parked cars. He hoped against the double pendulum of head and tail, orange between coyote teeth. But no cat appeared, in or out of jaws.

  He wasn’t sure how long he watched, but, when he turned, Lily stood in the bedroom doorway, her shorts and sweatshirt back on, undergarments balled wet in her hand.

  “I guess I’ll be going,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Hey,” she said. “It happens. I hear it happens a lot to older guys.”

  And he was glad to have the teasing back.

  “I hope you find your cat,” she said.

  He told her he did too. “Those cigarettes,”
he said.

  “One for the road?” she said.

  “If that’s okay.”

  She pulled the pack from her pocket and shook one out. This time, he studied the pack, caught the logo and the name. She dropped the cigarette into his open palm. Her fingertips grazed his skin, but the current was gone, burnt out or too diffuse to feel, like in high school physics, the experiment they’d done with electricity. They’d stood in a circle, those brave enough to take part, and all held hands. The first loop, the current passing through them, he felt the pulse. The charge weakened, circling, until six, seven revolutions later, he felt nothing at all.

  He slipped the joint into his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I never meant to—”

  “Sleep with me?”

  “Change my mind. I never meant to change my mind.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Next time you want to sniff a girl’s panties, though, there’s got to be an easier way than all this.”

  He was disgusted with himself. He wondered how she could have seen into the bathroom, but then she was laughing, saying, “I’m kidding. Jesus. Lighten up.”

  And then she was at the door, then opening it, then crouching, making kissing noises into the night. He saw the red of her sweatshirt, the alligator’s ridge of her backbone cutting the shirt in two. And then he saw the cat in her arms.

  “She came back!” Lily said. The cat purred and rubbed its muzzle across her middle. Briefly, the head tucked itself into the pocket of her shirt, then pulled back out, shaking, like a dog shaking off water. Lily laughed, and Brig didn’t have the heart to tell her, first, that the missing cat was not his own, and, second, that this was not the missing cat. This cat, a tom, belonged to the Indian couple upstairs. They let the cat out nights to fight and fuck, and it never surprised Brig to see him wandering the complex, a slash down the calico bridge of his nose or one eye oozing, swollen shut.

  The cat hissed when Brig took it.

  “Can I see you again?” he said.

  “What for?” Lily said.

  And Brig saw he didn’t have the answer to that question.