By Meghan Chou
Featured Art: Stephen Reichert, Untitled, 2014. Oil on canvas, 12″ x 12″. “Cirlce” series.
I first saw her aboard the JADE PRINCESS, a cruise ship several miles off the coast of New Hampshire. She wore ribbons in her hair and a leather choker around her neck that read GIVE ME A REASON. The two of us made up the entire wedding party. I played the roles of daughter and maid of honor and she, her father’s best man. The other guests were staff on their dinner break and a couple gamblers, vying for a seat at the blackjack table.
The captain kept the ceremony short (on autopilot like his ship). Ma had already been married twice, yet for Husband #3, she still felt giddy and hopeful. Where I saw folding chairs and a wrinkled backdrop, she saw romance. Where I saw a cardboard cutout of her last boyfriend, she saw the love of her life. When the time came to exchange vows, I handed Ma the wedding band for her five-second fiancé, a mood ring from LOST & FOUND that glowed black in my sweaty hands. The best man gave her father a light-up jelly ring and our parents sealed it all with a kiss.
“Faye,” she introduced herself at the reception, my stepsister before I learned her name.
“Lenny.”
“That short for something?” I think I shrugged her off. How could I have known then, that one day I might want to remember the story of how we met?
Ma and I weren’t on vacation. We could never afford a month at sea. Instead, we worked for room and board. We cleaned the cabins, scrubbed the toilets, and kept the thermostat at a perky 65°F. I heard a rumor that in Vegas, casinos pump oxygen onto the floor to keep their customers awake. The JADE PRINCESS didn’t bother with anything so fancy, they just hired a seventeen-year old to crank the A/C at the top of each hour. Artificial air—even now, I get queasy at the smell.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the bartender shouted into a parrot-shaped microphone, “for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Mikey and Loretta Bell!”
Ma and Mikey burst through the casino doors, holding hands. A bachelorette party hollered in solidarity. Some grannies at the slot machines shook their cups of quarters. Joy Division played from a set of speakers, hidden in the ceiling next to secret cameras used to catch card counters. Love, love will tear us apart, again, the adults groaned to their teenage punk anthem, shaking their heads like dogs sick of their collars. Mikey twirled Ma around and around. She looked so happy in her Tommy Bahama shirt—the only white clothing at the gift shop—I couldn’t help but dance along too. We all lose our resolve in a crowd. Well, except Faye, who just chewed her pinky nail, chipping away at the cherry-colored lacquer.
“You look constipated,” I said. Or maybe it was the other way around and I hugged the bulkhead, watching her sway from side to side.
I know for sure I got seasick that night. Despite the size of the ship, it still obeyed the ocean—the leap and spin and plunge of a young bull. Vertigo overtook me. My mouth filled with spit. I made it to the fifth song before I staggered up to the deck for some fresh air. The moon swung huge. Waves sloshed against the ship. I pressed my acne-covered cheek to the guardrail, ready to return to dry land. As my stomach churned, I heard footsteps approaching. I peeked under my armpit and recognized her right away, a stranger no more.
“You following me?” I groaned.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Faye said. “I came up for a swim.”
“A swim?” I lifted my head, forgetting my vertigo. This wasn’t one of those bougie Caribbean cruises with a pool or hot tub. Just a place to gamble and binge drink.
Faye didn’t elaborate. She kicked off her shoes, barefoot on the saltwater deck, and threw her legs over the railing. Her toes gripped the gunwale. She leaned away from the ship. Beyond her, the night sky stretched black in all directions and stars twinkled where the wild geese flew. I wanted to pull her back to safety, but before I could grab her wrist, she raised her arms above her head, hands cupped as if checking a mango for blemishes.
In each retelling of that night, the JADE PRINCESS grows in size, taller and taller until we hang impossibly high in the sky. More likely we stood just ten meters above the water, but I swear when Faye dove, she tumbled for miles and miles.
***
Ma and I didn’t own much. Our possessions fit in Mikey’s truck and in a single trip, we delivered our life across town. Faye and I rode in the back on Ma’s beloved purple couch. It had sat in storage for months and stank of sage and kitty litter, despite us never owning a cat.
“You girls alive?” Ma yelled through the sliding cab window.
“Hanging in there,” I yelled back, but each time Mikey hit a pothole, I worried I might fly into the windshield of the car behind like a poorly strapped Christmas tree.
“Not much further,” Ma promised, even though she hadn’t a clue where Mikey lived. When Faye corrected her, Ma insisted distance was an illusion. She reasoned, “The sky only looks blue ’cause it’s so far away.”
“What about this couch? If we ditch it by the highway, will it magically change colors?”
“Don’t get her started,” I warned Faye.
The couch belonged in a music video for Prince: big and loud and a violent shade of purple. People always asked about the color. Ma would make up a funny story, but we both knew she bought the couch for a man named Axel, who told her she looked good in purple.
He was our super at the Evergreens, the subsidized apartments where I spent the eighth grade. It was a big deal, living on our own. When we moved in, I made Ma promise no more boyfriends and she really tried, but I caught her whiting out old paystubs and fudging the dates for the social worker like a kid hiding an F on a report card.
There was a pool at the Evergreens: over-chlorinated and perfect. No matter the weather, Ma and I put on our bathing suits and lounged poolside with a book. We picked our way through a reading list I found in Jezebel called “Feminism in Your 30s.” Ma started quoting Eve Babitz over dinner. She talked of opening a flower shop, PETALS OF LOVE. She wanted to specialize in wedding bouquets.
“No funerals,” she said. “Bad luck to mix those two.”
But those dreams vanished when Axel saw Ma in a purple bathing suit and told her she looked stunning. After they met, Ma repainted the kitchen walls a funky shade called PURPLICIOUS. She redecorated our apartment with purple placemats, dishes, sheets, pillows, rugs. By the end of their affair, she had maxed out two credits cards and we got tossed from the Evergreens for breaking the rules of our lease. I’ve always wondered if the next tenant kept the color of the kitchen walls or if Axel himself had the task of painting it back to white.
In the years that followed, we lost many of our belongings, but never Ma’s purple couch. We dragged it from one boyfriend to the next. At the end of Ma’s new relationships, the first thing tossed to the curb, after us, was always that couch. I’m not sure if Ma even liked it. It often ended up in the garage or the basement or the extra bedroom with the air bike and treadmill. When we yanked it out of storage this time, Mikey didn’t seem too thrilled either. He took off his cap and rubbed his head and muttered something about checking for bed bugs before we brought it inside the house.
***
Mikey and Faye lived in a ranch house a few feet from the main road. We pulled up just before dinnertime. A flag pole marked the end of their driveway. Past it, sat acres of abandoned land where once upon a time, cornfields surrounded the Bell mansion, a three-story Victorian home with history and grace. But in the Fifties, the mansion burned down. By the time Ma and I arrived, generations later, little remained of the family estate.
“Is this it?” Ma asked, hanging her head out the cab.
“We’re remodeling,” Mikey said, and Faye laughed right on his heels.
It took all four of us to lift the couch out the bed of the truck. There were plenty of boxes to unload too. Our parents stayed back to dig through bubblewrap and crumpled grocery-store coupons, while Faye and I bullied the couch into the house.
We tried many angles. Pushed and fought and scratched. I wanted to call it quits, but so long as Faye struggled, I followed. When we finally got it through the front door, I learned a sectional already claimed the space in front of the TV and wondered why we even bothered.
“We can put it in our room instead,” Faye said.
“Lead the way,” I sighed.
The house was built with narrow, rambling hallways. We had to wiggle the couch toward our bedroom like a swollen purple tampon. The backrest squeaked on wood-paneled walls. The base left tracks on the carpet wherever we got lazy and just dragged the thing. Despite the tight squeeze, we were managing fine until Faye accidentally triggered the recliner. Bang! The footrest punched through the wall to my right, decorated with family photos. I heard fumbling, followed by the smash of breaking glass. Then, I was standing there empty handed.
“What the hell?” I shouted. The couch had nearly landed on my toe. Faye stood on the other side, unapologetic, holding a picture frame she had saved instead: a photo of her father in muddy jeans, posed with a derby car and trophy.
“Grab the vacuum, will ya?” She gestured to the shattered glass at her feet—the aftermath of the other frames like glitter lost in the carpet. Before I could ask where to find it, she read my mind, “It’s in my father’s room.”
I could’ve pushed past Faye to our bedroom and insisted she get the vacuum herself. After a month at sea, I just wanted to stretch out on a mattress big enough I couldn’t touch all four corners at once, but I caved and followed her instructions to the basement, where her father slept. Downstairs, I discovered Mikey lived out of piles of clothes, heaped on crates and tailgate chairs. A TV leaned against the water heater. An ironing board doubled as a coat rack. With a bit of digging, I found the vacuum under the bed. As I reached down to drag it free, I heard Ma through the walls, arguing on the driveway with her new husband.
I knew this was not the home she pictured when she met Mikey on that cruise. I recognized this part of her affairs too well. I could hear all over again the sound of shattering glass, only this time, there were no pieces to pick up.
***
Mikey owned a body shop called The Grease Monkey. In July, when the heat could beat a person dumb, his day workers would dice a watermelon and leave the sticky mess to fry on the hood of a car.
When Faye and I ran out of ways to kill our boredom, we swung by the shop to gobble up the remaining fruit and suck the rinds dry. The sun had burnt the pink flesh yellow. The juice left our fingers ripe and gummy. We saved handfuls of black seeds and swallowed them whole in hopes a baby watermelon might grow in our bellies and we could burp the sweet flavor on demand—a whimsical idea born from splitting a joint behind the garage with a mechanic named Earl. Our parents smelled the pot on our breath and decided it was time we got summer jobs.
“Grab some gloves and make yourselves useful,” Mikey scolded us as we followed him to a car parked at the AIR & VAC, all giggles and gas.
Mikey received routine shipments of Mustangs, totaled in freeway pileups and traffic-light T-bones. In the middle of the night, he often drove out to the shop to meet a tow truck and buy the slip for a crumpled hot rod with a custom plate like ID8 MOMS, 69CYOTE, or SSVDVB (read upside down). He chipped away the parts that still worked and pieced together a Frankenstein ride that ran great for the derby, but illegal for the road.
This particular Mustang had a green hood, orange doors, and the phone numbers of various junkyards scrawled across its body in paint.
“Rip those out,” Mikey gestured to the sagging airbags, “then start on the dash.”
Faye and I spent all afternoon prepping the Mustang for the upcoming derby. We removed the headlights, tore off the trim, and hammered the exhaust pipe so it slouched like Charlie Brown. Faye complained endlessly, unfamiliar with manual labor. Her father had kept her from his shop, steadfast his kid not work on her elbows and knees. Unlike Faye, my hands were rough and bruised. On the JADE PRINCESS, we cleaned with a pink bleach that ate through the nitrile gloves meant to protect our skin. My fingernails were brittle and stained. My knees creaked like an old lady’s. Auto work was backbreaking, but compared to the duties of a maid, I didn’t mind.
Over the course of the next few hours, a pile of junk grew on the floor of the Mustang: scraps of plastic, vents, and buttons to control the FM radio. The interior of the car looked more and more like a bird’s nest, wires exposed and sharp objects strewn haphazardly. We disconnected the battery so we could proceed onto the dash, worried about getting electrocuted. The battery had shifted in the crash and it took Faye a second to locate the negative port, but when she did, she ripped the wire free and slammed the hood shut, hard enough to pop open the glovebox inside like an elaborate Chinese puzzle box. Out clattered a kid’s toy, a Batman action figure well-worn and loved. I held it up for Faye to see.
“You think-” I started to ask, but she cut me off.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t wanna know the answers to.” She glanced back at the garage, where Mikey helped a young woman change the spent brake pads on her car.
By the end of the day, the Mustang was completely wrecked, a boxer after the fifth round. Faye and I worked until it got too dark to see our hands. We crawled out of the car backwards and left it to rot at the AIR & VAC. As we headed in the direction of the shop, all was quiet. The workers had clocked out and there were no customers in sight. A streetlight flickered on, warm and inviting. I found myself enjoying this sleepy part of town—the calm a head rush that made time slow. But the moment could not last. Raised voices leaked from inside the shop, followed by the unmistakable sound of a slap. I ran ahead and yanked open the garage door. With a screech, it rose to reveal Ma, lying on the oil-stained floor.
“I’m ok, I’m ok,” she insisted. A car on the lift obscured her face in shadows, but I could still see the angry red outline of Mikey’s hand on her cheek.
***
For my eighteenth birthday, Ma threw herself a party. She invited Mikey’s poker buddies and some old coworkers from the JADE PRINCESS. Alice, a cocktail waitress, and a couple understudies from last season’s revival of COME FROM AWAY made an appearance, but I could only recall the names of their characters: Kevin, Beverley, Bonnie, and Oz.
The guests parked in our backyard, guided by the ruins of the former Bell mansion. They nosed around the rim of a defunct fountain, lost in the weeds. I’d seen photos when it still ran, a majestic thing with bronze mermaids, lounging at the water’s edge, but the guests viewed it as a lousy trap for their cars. Faye and I watched from our bedroom window, entertained until the very last guest found a parking spot. Then, we resorted to our collection of half-smoked joints.
We had a scheme to disguise the smell. A bath towel under the door and a large floor fan were our accomplices. I doubt we fooled anyone, but as Faye liked to say, A girl can dream. Outside, the party chugged along—our window frame a television screen through which we watched the melodrama of our ordinary, suburban lives. We had bummed countless joints that summer, reclining by the window on Ma’s purple couch. The programming rarely changed. On Sunday mornings, Mikey, pretending to mow the lawn. On Tuesday nights, Ma, sipping wine from the bottle. Yet despite the hours we spent hotboxing our room, the couch still smelled of sage and kitty litter.
The night of the party, our parents hovered around the grill, smiling in that way which made their lips cling to their teeth.
“You think they’re happy?” I asked Faye as we smoked. She shrugged and pulled the fan closer, so the whir of the plastic blades cluttered our thoughts.
I could sense that I was losing her and didn’t know what to do. As the white noise of the fan filled the room, I grabbed her face and wrenched her mouth toward mine. We kissed, desperate and confused. But even as I held her between my hands, I felt her slipping away like butter off a hot knife. It was too late. Too late to tell her how since we met, I kept having this dream that we were already dead. Nothing killed us—not natural causes, not guns, not disease, but I lay with my head in her lap, a cigarette burning through my hand, waiting like that, for something to jar us awake.
Faye pushed me away when a couple party guests wandered by our window. Our lips parted and I finally came up for air, recognizing Alice, in a clean, blue sweater, and her husband, Paul. They lingered on the other side of the mosquito netting and contemplated the evening light. A late summer breeze forced Alice to hold down the back of her skirt. A few beers had made her husband drowsy.
“God, how long is this party?” Alice complained.
“I could fake a call from the babysitter,” her husband offered. Alice let go of her skirt to pull a lighter from his shirt pocket.
“Don’t bother. I’m tired of pretending for Loretta. She’s not in love, she just doesn’t know how to be alone.”
“Then let’s go home.”
Paul looped his arm around Alice’s waist and pointed their keys toward the pile of cars parked in the backyard. Headlights flashed in the distance, suspended in the muggy air.
***
Mikey owed a car to a driver named Pretty Boy, a bet gone sideways. Faye and I drove his latest creation to the demolition derby to settle his debt. The Mustang had undergone further destruction since we last saw it. Mikey 86ed the backseat and wrapped duct-tape around the steering wheel; he snapped off the mirrors and busted out the windows. Any other afternoon, cops would have pulled us aside for driving such a POS, but that day, a line of derby cars croaked toward the fields behind Route 101—a procession of Cinderella’s ugliest stepsisters.
When we arrived at the derby, the crowd was in full swing. Kids ran around with earmuffs and American flag picks. Drivers posed with their cars. Pretty Boy waited for us in the parking lot with a helmet under his arm. He wore tight jeans and a tank top that showed off his arms. Chiseled and blonde, he really lived up to his name.
“Mikey’s outdone himself,” he said, admiring the eyesore before us.
“You think it’s a winner?” I asked.
“Bet on me and you might just find out.” He winked and drove off in the Mustang to join the other competitors. Through the billow of dust, I noticed his car didn’t have the usual cheesy license plate, only a series of numbers and the state motto, LIVE FREE OR DIE.
It was a cloudless day, the sky a searing blue. Faye and I sat at the top of the bleachers as the sun beat down. I picked at a scab. She chewed her nails, thunder black and glossy. At a quarter to two, a pair of cowboys stepped out to sing the Star Spangled Banner. The crowd stood and removed their hats. We stood too, but I did not put my hand over my heart. I had picked up a betting slip and held it between sweaty fingers, debating whether to cough up some cash. I was old enough now and our parents liked to gamble. Well, Mikey liked to gamble and Ma liked to hold his drink at the casino, a lime careening along the rim of the glass. But before I could decide, the chicken fights began.
There were several heats based on vehicle class. Pretty Boy and the Mustang waited on the sidelines for the outlaw division, where modified cars could compete in a free for all. When it was their turn, they put on a good show. The crunch of metal on metal filled the stadium. Engines growled. The crowd roared. Pretty Boy fought hard. He rolled a Crown Vic and burst the fuel tank of a car with BUCKLE UP! painted across its hood. Right before each collision, I got this feeling of inevitability like when a star player rushes their opponent’s goal and the field shifts and you just know they’re going to score.
Sure enough, the Mustang was the last car standing. Pretty Boy handed us back the keys and wrote his number on my hand. He told me I had one more chance to bet on him, then took off with his winnings. Faye and I were left with the Mustang, a smoking mess. Unable to find a trailer to hitch it to or a helping hand, we drove it home, stopping to refuel at a Circle K. I went inside to pay and pointed to the disaster at Pump #4.
“Whatever’s cheapest,” I said. The gas station attendant burst out laughing.
“You’re better off buying a lotto ticket and praying you can cover a cab ride home.” He had a point, so I told him to add one of those scratch-off games to the bill.|
While the meter ran, Faye and I sat in the car and played the lotto, a $2 CASHWORD with a small prize. We had found a spare penny by the pump and scratched the legend one dollar sign at a time. For each vowel revealed, we shouted in excitement, forgetting this was not a game of Hangman and an a, e, i, o, or u did not increase the chances we would live to guess again. In the end, we were short just one letter to win back our money.
“So close, so close,” we whispered, even though a loss had been predetermined by the barcode on the back of the ticket. I hated to admit it, but we sounded just like Mikey when he came home from the casino.
When the pump shut off, I got out to return the nozzle, while Faye tried to start the car. Behind me, I heard it sputter once, twice, three times, then give out. Faye groaned and flashed a thumbs down out the window. I still held the nozzle in my hand, curious if we could get a refund on the gas that would now go to waste.
***
Shortly after, Mikey and Ma ended things sour. I struggled to trace the exact trajectory of their downfall. I wanted a row of dominoes, a smoking gun. Instead, I have a vague memory of a seaside casino and a parking lot so near the ocean, the beach invaded the solid yellow lines. At the time, I didn’t pay attention to the rest. It felt insignificant. Doesn’t it always? I mean, can we ever know? Or do we all wander around with both eyes shut, only to look back and wonder, what was dream and what was real?
Faye—a white roulette ball clutched to her chest like a pearl for safekeeping.
Mikey—tossing a wad of cash out the car window.
Ma—bent at odd angles.
They left us there. Caught in the rotating beam of the lighthouse. Sand blowing in my eyes.
We went back inside and sat at the casino restaurant for hours, nowhere to call home. Our booth stank of salt and fish. We snacked on ice chips and oyster crackers, turned off by the rest of the multicultural buffet, a suspicious spread of sushi, chicken wings, and room-temperature guac. The waiter stopped by our table five or six times to refill our water and tap his watch until, finally, Ma ordered the most expensive thing off the menu. She asked me what else I wanted, but I was too busy wondering if Faye and I would ever meet again.
I could picture it. Somewhere down the line, we’d run into each other. She’d offer me a smoke and I’d tell her I quit. And when she’d tell me she needed to get back to where she was going, I’d hold her gaze for far too long. We’d end up in bed anyways. Twin frames, pushed together, so all that separated us was a thin crease. We’d talk until our eyes grew heavy and our breaths, thick. I’m not sure who would drift off first, but in the middle of the night, I’d roll over to find Faye’s face inches from mine. Fast asleep. Drool pooling at the corner of her mouth, so self-assured it could hold its shape like syrup. I won’t be able to help myself. I’ll reach over to mold her lip like God carving a cliff for a waterfall.
“Eat up, girl,” Ma told me when the waiter returned with our food.
The tray was so heavy, it nearly tipped off the table. The seafood platter consisted of eight crabs, two lobsters, a ring of shrimp, a clambake, plus fried calamari, onion rings, and three ramekins filled with garlic butter. I had to stand to reach the other side. Before I could dig in, Ma handed me a lobster.
“This here’s a new tradition,” she said, but there was nothing new about her breakups.
Across the booth from me, Ma clutched her lobster with both hands. It had two beady eyes and pale rings on its claws where rubber bands once held them shut. Cracking a lobster tail is a rite of passage in New England. I could never get it right, preferring instead the frozen chocks shoved into California rolls at Sushi Town. But Ma flexed her wrists like an expert and cracked the tail in half. A clean split. She hurried to squeeze a lemon over her perfectly butterflied shell, blaming a stray shot of citrus for tearing up her eyes.
“How do you even aim these things?” she asked, a sticky sheen to her cheeks.
When it came time to pay, our table was still teeming with food. Ma and I did not bother to pack any of the leftovers. We had no fridge, no kitchen, no home. I started to hand over the money Mikey threw out his car window, but Ma pulled out her credit card instead and waved the cash aside.
“That’s the tip,” she said.
By the time we left, the sun had broken over the horizon. Nighttime surfers straggled to their cars. Neon signs and billboards dimmed. Ma called us a cab to nowhere. As we waited on the curb for it to arrive, I turned to see if we had left a mark on the casino’s revolving glass door, but a bellboy already chased our fingerprints away with a thin, white rag.
Meghan Chou is a writer and production designer based in Brooklyn. Her work can be found in the Bryant Literary Review, Chautauqua, and elsewhere. As a designer, she is represented by The Gersh Agency and has worked with clients like Nike, Pinterest, and Atlantic Records. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. You can follow her on IG: @megschou.
Stephen Reichert (American, b. 1975), Baltimore City, Maryland, is a multidisciplinary artist with recent solo shows at Hancock Solar Gallery, Co_Lab, Baltimore City Hall, and Sotheby’s Roland Park Gallery; a current show at The Fox Building; and group shows at Ellington-White Contemporary, The Peale Museum, American Visionary Art Museum, Arts Fort Worth, University of Maryland, National Art League, Cerulean Arts Gallery, Abington Art Center, Sebastopol Center for the Arts and many others. He is the editor of the poetry magazine Smartish Pace. Reichert is represented by K. Hamill Fine Art & Design.
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