Diary

  It was her panties, spotted with fresh blood.

  July 29—

  The New Moon

  JUST FOR THE RECORD, the weather today is heavy and scratchy and it hurts every time your wife tries to move.

  Dr. Touchet's just left. He's spent the past two hours wrapping her leg in strips of sterile cloth and clear acrylic resin. Her leg, from the ankle to the crotch, is one straight fiberglass cast. It's her knee, the doctor said.

  Peter, your wife is a klutz.

  Misty is the klutz.

  She's carrying a tray of Waldorf salads from the kitchen into the dining room when she trips. Right in the kitchen doorway, her feet go out from under her, and Misty, the tray, the plates of Waldorf salad, it all goes headfirst onto table eight.

  Of course, the whole dining room gets up to come look at her covered in mayonnaise. Her knee looks fine, and Raymon comes out of the kitchen and helps her to her feet. Still, the knee is sprained, says Dr. Touchet. He comes an hour later, after Raymon and Paulette help her up the stairs to her room. The doctor holds an ice pack on the knee, then offers Misty a cast in neon yellow, neon pink, or plain white.

  Dr. Touchet's squatting at her feet while Misty sits in a straight chair with her leg propped on a footstool. He's moving the ice pack, looking for signs of swelling.

  And Misty asks him, did he fill out Harrow's death certificate?

  Misty asks, did he prescribe sleeping pills for Peter?

  The doctor looks at her for a moment, then goes back to icing her leg. He says, “If you don't relax, you may never walk again.”

  Her leg, it already feels fine. It looks fine. Just for the record, her knee doesn't even hurt.

  “You're in shock,” Touchet says. He brings a briefcase, not a black doctor's bag. It's the kind of briefcase a lawyer would carry. Or a banker. “For you, a cast would be prophylactic,” he says. “Without it, you'll be running around with that police detective, and your leg will never heal.”

  Such a small town, the whole Waytansea Island wax museum is spying on her.

  Somebody knocks at the door, and then Grace and Tabbi come into the room. Tabbi says, “Mom, we brought you more paints,” and she holds a plastic shopping bag in each hand.

  Grace says, “How is she?”

  And Dr. Touchet says, “If she stays in this room the next three weeks, she'll be fine.” He starts winding gauze around the knee, layers and layers of gauze, thicker and thicker.

  Just so you know, the moment Misty found herself on the floor, when people came to help her, as they carried her upstairs, even while the doctor squeezed and flexed her knee, Misty kept saying, “What did I trip over?”

  There's nothing there. There's really nothing near that doorway to trip over.

  After that, Misty thanked God this happened at work. No way could the hotel beef about her missing work.

  Grace says, “Can you wiggle your toes?”

  Yes, Misty can. She just can't reach them.

  Next, the doctor wraps the leg in strips of fiberglass.

  Tabbi comes over and touches the huge fiberglass log with her mother's leg lost somewhere inside it, and she says, “Can I sign my name on it?”

  “Give it a day to dry,” the doctor says.

  Misty's leg straight out in front of her, it must weigh eighty pounds. She feels fossilized. Embedded in amber. An ancient mummy. This is going to be a real ball and chain.

  It's funny, the way your mind tries to make sense out of chaos. Misty feels terrible about it now, but the moment Raymon came out of the kitchen, as he put his arm under her and lifted, she said, “Did you just trip me?”

  He brushed the Waldorf salad, the apple chunks and chopped walnuts, out of her hair, and he said, “Cómo?”

  What you don't understand you can make mean anything.

  Even then, the kitchen door was propped open and the floor there was clean and dry.

  Misty said, “How did I fall?”

  And Raymon shrugged and said, “On your culo.”

  All the kitchen guys standing around, they laughed.

  Now, up in her room, her leg cocooned in a heavy white piñata, Grace and Dr. Touchet lift Misty under each arm and steer her over to the bed. Tabbi gets her green algae pills out of her purse and sets them on the bedside table. Grace unplugs the telephone and loops the cord, saying, “You need peace and quiet.” Grace says, “There's nothing wrong with you that a little art therapy won't cure,” and she starts taking things out of the shopping bags, tubes of paint and brushes, and setting them in piles on the dresser.

  Out of his briefcase, the doctor takes a syringe. He wipes Misty's arm with cold alcohol. Better her arm than her nipple.

  Can you feel this?

  The doctor fills the syringe from a bottle and sticks the needle in her arm. He pulls it out and gives her a wad of cotton to stop any blood. “It's to help you sleep,” he says.

  Tabbi sits on the edge of the bed and says, “Does it hurt?”

  No, not a bit. Her leg feels fine. The shot hurt more.

  The ring on Tabbi's finger, the sparkling green peridot, it catches light from the window. The rug edges along the bottom of the window, and under the rug's where Misty's hidden her tip money. Their ticket home to Tecumseh Lake.

  Grace puts the phone into an empty shopping bag and holds her hand out to Tabbi. She says, “Come. Let's give your mother a rest.”

  Dr. Touchet stands in the open door and says, “Grace? If I could talk to you, in private?”

  Tabbi gets off the bed, and Grace leans down to whisper in her ear. Then Tabbi nods her head, fast. She's wearing the heavy pink necklace of shimmering rhinestones. It's so wide it must feel as heavy around her neck as the cast does around her mother's leg. A sparkling millstone. A junk jewelry ball and chain. Tabbi undoes the clasp and brings it to the bed, saying, “Hold up your head.”

  She reaches a hand past each of Misty's shoulders and snaps the necklace around her mother's neck.

  Just for the record, Misty's not an idiot. Poor Misty Marie Kleinman knew the blood on her panties was Peter's. But right now, at this moment, she's so glad she didn't abort her child.

  Your blood.

  Why Misty said yes to marrying you—she doesn't know. Why does anyone do anything? Already she's melting into the bed. Every breath is slower than the last. Her levator palpebrae muscles have to work hard to keep her eyes open.

  Tabbi goes to the easel and takes down a tablet of drawing paper. She brings the paper and a charcoal pencil and puts them on the blankets beside her mother, saying, “For in case you get inspiration.”

  And Misty gives her a slow-motion kiss on the forehead.

  Between the cast and the necklace, Misty feels pinned to the bed. Staked out. A sacrifice. An anchoress.

  Then Grace takes Tabbi's hand and they go out to Dr. Touchet in the hallway. The door closes. It's so quiet, Misty's not sure if she hears right. But there's an extra little click.

  And Misty calls, “Grace?” Misty calls, “Tabbi?” In slow motion, Misty says, “Hey there? Hello?” Just for the record, they've locked her in.

  July 30

  THE FIRST TIME Misty wakes up after her accident, her pubic hair's gone and a catheter is inside her, snaking down her good leg to a clear plastic bag hooked to the bedpost. Bands of white surgical tape strap the tube to her leg skin.

  Dear sweet Peter, nobody has to tell you how that feels.

  Dr. Touchet's been at work again.

  Just for the record, waking up on drugs with your pubic hair shaved and something plastic stuck in your vagina doesn't necessarily make you a real artist.

  If it did, Misty would be painting the Sistine Chapel. Instead she's wadding up another wet sheet of 140-pound watercolor paper. Outside her little dormer window, the sun's baking the sand on the beach. The waves hiss and burst. Seagulls tremble, hanging in the wind, hovering white kites, while kids make sand castles and splash in the rising tide.

  It would be one thing to trade all her
sunny days for a masterpiece, but this . . . her day's been just one shitty smeared mistake after another. Even with her full-leg cast and her little bag of piss, Misty wants to be outside. As an artist, you organize your life so you get a chance to paint, a window of time, but that's no guarantee you'll create anything worth all your effort. You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.

  The truth is, if Misty were on the beach, she'd be looking up at this window, dreaming of being a painter.

  The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.

  Misty's half standing at her easel, balanced on a tall stool, looking out the window toward Waytansea Point, Tabbi's sitting in the patch of sunlight at her feet, coloring her cast with felt-tipped pens. That's what hurts. It's bad enough Misty spent most of her childhood hiding indoors, coloring in books, dreaming of being an artist. Now she's modeling this bad behavior for her kid. All the mud pies Misty missed baking, now Tabbi's going to miss. Whatever it is teenagers do. All the kites Misty didn't fly, the games of tag Misty skipped, all the dandelions Misty didn't pick, Tabbi is making her same mistake.

  The only flowers Tabbi's seen, she found with her grandmother, painted around the rim of a teacup.

  School starts in a few weeks, and Tabbi's still so pale from staying inside.

  Misty's brush making another mess on the page in front of her, Misty says, “Tabbi honey?”

  Tabbi sits, rubbing a red pen on the cast. The resin and cloth is so thick, Misty can't feel a thing.

  Misty's smock is one of Peter's old blue work shirts with a rusted fur clip of fake rubies on the front pocket. Fake rubies and glass diamonds. Tabbi's brought the box of dress-up jewelry, all the junk brooches and bracelets and single earrings that Peter gave Misty in school.

  That you gave your wife.

  Misty's wearing your shirt, and she tells Tabbi, “Why don't you run outside for a few hours?”

  Tabbi switches the red pen for a yellow one, and she says, “Granmy Wilmot said for me not to.” Coloring, Tabbi says, “She told me to stay with you as long as you're awake.”

  This morning, Angel Delaporte's brown sports car pulled into the hotel's gravel parking lot. Wearing a wide straw beach hat, Angel got out and walked up to the front porch. Misty kept expecting Paulette to come up from the front desk and say she had a visitor, but no. A half hour later, Angel came out the hotel's front doors and walked down the porch steps. With one hand, he held his hat in place as he tilted his head back and scanned the hotel windows, the clutter of signs and logos. Corporate graffiti. Competing immortalities. Then Angel put on his sunglasses, slipped into his sports car, and drove away.

  In front of her is another painted mess. Her perspective is all wrong.

  Tabbi says, “Granmy told me to help you get inspired.”

  Instead of painting, Misty should be teaching her child some skill—bookkeeping or cost analysis or television repair. Some realistic way she can pay her bills.

  Sometime after Angel Delaporte drove away, Detective Stilton drove up in a plain beige county government car. He walked into the hotel, then went back to his car a few minutes later. He stood in the parking lot, shading his eyes with one hand, staring up at the hotel, looking from window to window, but not seeing her. Then he drove away.

  The mess in front of her, the colors are running and smudged. The trees could be microwave relay towers. The ocean could be volcano lava or cold chocolate pudding or just six bucks' worth of gouache watercolors, wasted. Misty tears off the sheet and wads it into a ball. Her hands are almost black with wadding up her failures all day. Her head aches. Misty closes her eyes and presses a hand to her forehead, where she feels it stick with wet paint.

  Misty drops the wadded painting on the floor.

  And Tabbi says, “Mom?”

  Misty opens her eyes.

  Tabbi's colored birds and flowers down the length of her cast. Blue birds and red robins and red roses.

  When Paulette brings up their lunch on a room service cart, Misty asks if anyone has tried to phone from the front desk. Paulette shakes out the cloth napkin and tucks it into the collar of the blue work shirt. She says, “Sorry, nobody.” She takes the warming cover off a plate of fish and says, “Why do you ask?”

  And Misty says, “No reason.”

  Now, sitting here with Tabbi, with flowers and birds crayoned on her leg, Misty knows she'll never be an artist. The picture she sold Angel, it was a fluke. An accident. Instead of crying, Misty just pees a few drips into her plastic tube.

  And Tabbi says, “Close your eyes, Mom.” She says, “Color with your eyes closed, like you did on my birthday picnic.”

  Like she did when she was little Misty Marie Kleinman. Her eyes closed on the shag carpet in the trailer.

  Tabbi leans close and whispers, “We were hiding in the trees and peeking at you.” She says, “Granmy said we had to let you get inspiration.”

  Tabbi goes to the dresser and gets the roll of masking tape that Misty uses to hold paper on the easel. She tears off two strips and says, “Now close your eyes.”

  Misty has nothing to lose. She can indulge her kid. Her work couldn't get any worse. Misty closes her eyes.

  And Tabbi's little fingers press a strip of tape over each eyelid.

  The way her father's eyes are taped shut. To keep them from drying out.

  Your eyes are taped shut.

  In the dark, Tabbi's fingers put a pencil in Misty's hand. You can hear as she sets a drawing pad on the easel and lifts the cover sheet. Then her hands take Misty's and carry the pencil until it touches the paper.

  The sun from the window feels warm. Tabbi's hand lets go, and her voice in the dark says, “Now draw your picture.”

  And Misty's drawing, the perfect circles and angles, the straight lines Angel Delaporte says are impossible. Just by the feeling, it's perfect and right. What it is, Misty has no idea. The way a stylus moves itself across a Ouija board, the pencil takes her hand back and forth across the paper so fast Misty has to grip it tight. Her automatic writing.

  Misty's just able to hold on, and she says, “Tabbi?”

  The tape tight over her eyes, Misty says, “Tabbi? Are you still there?”

  August 2

  THERE'S A LITTLE TUG between Misty's legs, a little pull deep inside her when Tabbi snaps the bag off the end of Misty's catheter and takes it down the hall to the bathroom. She empties the bag into the toilet and washes it. Tabbi brings it back and snaps it onto the long plastic tube.

  She does all this so Misty can keep working in the pitch dark. Her eyes taped. Blind.

  There's just the feel of warm sunshine from the window. The moment the paintbrush stops, Misty says, “This is done.”

  And Tabbi slips the drawing off the easel and clips on a new sheet of paper. She takes the pencil when it looks dull and gives Misty a sharp one. She holds out a tray of pastel crayons, and Misty feels them blind, greasy piano keys of color, and picks one.

  Just for the record, every color Misty picks, every mark she makes, is perfect because she's stopped caring.

  For breakfast, Paulette brings up a room service tray, and Tabbi cuts everything into single bites. While Misty works, Tabbi puts the fork into her mother's mouth. With the tape over her face, Misty can only open her mouth so far. Just wide enough to suck her paintbrush into a sharp point. To poison herself. Still working, Misty doesn't taste. Misty doesn't smell. After a few bites of breakfast, she's had enough.

  Except for the scratch of the pencil on paper, the room is quiet. Outside, five floors down, the ocean waves hiss and burst.

  For lunch, Paulette brings up more food Misty doesn't eat. Already the leg cast feels loose from all the weight she's lost. Too much solid food would mean a trip to the toilet. It would mean a break in her work. Almost no white is left on the cast, Tabbi has covered it with so many flowers and birds. The fabric of her smock is stiff with slopped paint. Stiff and sticking to her arms and breasts. Her hands are crusted with dried paint.
Poisoned.

  Her shoulders ache and pop, and her wrist grinds inside. Her fingers are numb around a charcoal pencil. Her neck spasms, cramping up along each side of her spine. Her neck feels the way Peter's neck looks, arched back and touching his butt. Her wrists feel the way Peter's look, twisted and knotted.

  Her eyes taped shut, her face is relaxed so it won't fight the two strips of masking tape that run from her forehead down across each eye, down her cheeks to her jaw, then down to her neck. The tape keeps the orbicularis oculi muscle around her eye, the zygomatic major at the corner of her mouth, it keeps all her facial muscles relaxed. With the tape, Misty can open her lips just a sliver. She can only talk in a whisper.

  Tabbi puts a drinking straw in her mouth and Misty sucks some water. Tabbi's voice says, “No matter what happens, Granmy says you have to keep doing your art.”

  Tabbi wipes around her mother's mouth, saying, “I need to go pretty soon.” She says, “Please don't stop, no matter how much you miss me.” She says, “Do you promise?”

  And still working, Misty whispers, “Yes.”

  “No matter how long I'm gone?” Tabbi says.

  And Misty whispers, “I promise.”

  August 5

  BEING TIRED doesn't make you done. Being hungry or sore doesn't either. Needing to pee doesn't have to stop you. A picture is done when the pencil and paint are done. The telephone doesn't interrupt. Nothing else gets your attention. While the inspiration comes, you keep going.

  All day Misty's working blind, and then the pencil stops and she waits for Tabbi to take the picture and give her a blank sheet of paper. Then nothing happens.

  And Misty says, “Tabbi?”

  This morning, Tabbi pinned a big cluster brooch of green and red glass to her mother's smock. Then Tabbi stood still as Misty put the shimmering necklace of fat pink rhinestones around her daughter's neck. A statue. In the sunlight from the window, they sparkled bright as forget-me-nots and all the other flowers Tabbi has missed this summer. Then Tabbi taped her mother's eyes shut. That was the last time Misty saw her.