MARY-BETH

An excerpt from the novel Whidbey by T Kira Madden

HERE WAS RELIEF, to Mary-Beth, in planning her only child’s funeral. She felt guilty for the feeling. To plan a funeral meant to admit defeat, Calvin’s defeat and hers too, both of them squashed out at last not only by Tommy but the girls, and the Pigs, and Ronald Lee Book, Unofficial Mayoral Douchebag of Miami, and the teachers and parole officers and correctional officers and social workers and Your Honors, and the system of selective lifeboats (MONEY! It’s always the money!), and the cuntish polo-shirted neighbors who’d kicked Calvin like a Hacky Sack from place to place, who’d painted LUCIFER/AURORA on Mary-Beth’s Burbank Blue door, and Syl’s I told you sos, and Cal’s episode of Cops, and the snitch therapists, the whole world it felt like most usually, and of course, Mary-Beth would not leave out the person who’d run over her son.

Five times, forward and back.

The steps of planning a funeral transformed the taut pain of her chest into something coherent, productive. She remembered Calvin telling her the universe was always expanding, like a strip of dulled elastic, a rubber band at the bottom of her junk drawer. One day, without warning—Calvin had said—it would all snap. That’s how this death pain felt, a rubber band stretched beneath the bones of Mary-Beth’s feet, then secured at the top of her skull where headaches came on. She was an overblown balloon animal, skin thinning, and though her whole life had been spent waiting, she knew now, without Calvin, that annihilating snap might arrive sooner. There was some relief there, too.

Detective Carmen Durham hadn’t called Mary-Beth since she identified the body one week ago. Nobody had called her. There was no police unit left in the town nearest Gateway, the station boarded up for years (only Luckens selling bootleg T-Mobiles outside the station’s old door), so they were outsourcing the investigation to other units now. That’s what Syl said.

Ordering the finger foods, choosing a picture of Calvin for the program, selecting a nice and respectable place for a funeral—these tasks felt easier. Soothing, almost. These tasks were, simply, something Mary-Beth could do. For days Syl brought her the options—Deerfield or Palmetto or Broward, Pastor James or Pastor Finley, how many speeches, what songs—and Mary-Beth would close her eyes and picture it before offering an answer.

Syl had moved into Mary-Beth’s bedroom, Mary-Beth in the living room. This was on Mary-Beth’s insistence. She was more comfortable on her couch, ashtray one reach down, whorls of the TV glow reflecting in her special glass, upside-down little people in there, lulling her to sleep.

In the week since her arrival, Syl had begun to stink up the house, and Mary-Beth told her so. It always smelled like something now, someone else—those Indian meals from the fancy row of the Publix freezer, cloudberry angel wing perfume, lemon bug repellent, the LA Looks hair gel that farted out the bottle and into Syl’s palms. That, and all of Syl’s shoes and clothes smelled like horse shit, no matter how often Syl said that shit was just grass and grain, molasses concentrated, it was still shit. Mary-Beth hated living in grief with those smells.

Syl always hiked the AC way down on account of her hot flashes, which slicked the tile too cold. Mary-Beth had to wear her North Pole elf clothes around the house, those green and red stripes, bundled. When Syl needed formal paperwork signed, Mary-Beth would take the whole operation out the sliding glass doors to the back lawn, remove a few layers of clothing, then scribble her name a million times on the dimpled glass table. She sucked her orange baby food pouches—her toothaches worsening by the day. She wiped Misty ashes from the pages, leaving gray smears and tiny burns on words she could read but not understand. What casket? What wood? What money? The papers crinkle-shrunk in the humid air. July wrapped her body and squeezed. 

Mary-Beth’s yard dipped down to the communal lake. Encircling it: identical condos like a roll of Smarties, and a few gators spread out on the shoreline sunbathing at all hours, iridescent in stillness, even at night. The Lakeness Monster she used to call each gator when Calvin was little. Back then they’d lived in Dade County on a different canal, but still—those goddamn gators. She dreamed constantly of Calvin’s legs and little feet dangling from the open jaw, then disappearing under a body of black water. Never get too close to sitting water, she’d said to Cal. Never make eye contact. And if the monster comes at you, throw your arms up, make yourself big, and run a zigzag fast as you can.

The zigzag thing. Thinking of it now, she wasn’t sure where she’d heard it, if it were ever even true.

More: Guernica