Mostly Dead Things Read online

  She dropped her pencil. It rolled across the floor, landing near a couple of cans of spray paint. “Shoot,” she said, crawling after it.

  “Isn’t it something?” Lucinda Rex looked as casual as I’d ever seen her, jeaned and smocked and T-shirted as my mother. Her dark hair was bound back with a pink elastic band. She wore glasses, large frames that took up a lot of her face. It was overall a very cute look and I felt my hands start to sweat again.

  “What exactly are you all doing?” I asked, wondering if my own hair was doing that weird thing where it frizzed out of my braid.

  “Your mother’s trying out some new techniques. I think the work’s coming along nicely.”

  “Sure.” It looked to me like a truck had backed over a garbage can full of roadkill, but I wasn’t about to say that to Lucinda.

  “Do we have any Spackle?” My mother had picked up the squirrel’s head and was attaching it to a loose armadillo plate using the hot glue. When she pulled back the gun, the string broke midair, giving the squirrel a plastic toupee.

  “Of course, Libby. Let me go see what I can find.”

  On the floor beside my mother was a wheeled tray. It was covered at the top, as if she were about to enjoy some room service. The cloth was white and crisp.

  “You gonna have a sandwich?”

  “What?” She gouged at the armadillo plate with an X-Acto, digging free random chunks. “Oh, lunch. I forgot again.”

  “What’s this then?” I flipped back the napkin and looked down at a wide array of anatomy. “Are these . . . ?”

  “Couple of vulvas. There’s a scrotal sack somewhere . . .” She yanked the cloth from my hand and revealed the rest, a large metal tray covered with sexual organs. “Ah, here it is.” She jabbed her knife at a wrinkled wad rolling in the corner.

  “What are you gonna do with those?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Her attention went back to the X-Acto; she continued ramming her knife into the side of the armadillo plates, whittling holes roughly the size of quarters.

  Lucinda brought back several tubes of adhesive. “Here you are. Wasn’t sure what would work best, so I just brought everything we had.”

  The work perverted all the things I loved about taxidermy. Our pieces, done right, left the animals whole and lifelike—as if they could step off the mount and wander right back out to the woods. My mother’s animals were mangled and misshapen, slopped together like trash. It took away their dignity.

  “Could we go now?” I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose. I wished I’d stayed for another beer at the bar, or that I’d called Milo to pick her up.

  “Go sit out front if it bothers you that much.”

  “It doesn’t bother me.” I stared at the squirrel, its face stretched into a grimace of pain, though I knew it could no longer feel anything.

  “Of course it does. But you know what? I don’t care.”

  My mother slashed open the armadillo shell, spreading it like sandwich bread. From there, she began adhering the whole of it to a wide white canvas, set up on an easel beside her. It looked like somebody had tried and failed to put up drywall. The tiny dark nose emerged from the Spackle, snorkeling for air.

  “It’s awful,” I said, unable to take any more. “I can barely look at it.”

  “Oh, really? It’s awful?” She opened the largest tub of glue and smeared it onto the canvas and over the armadillo plates, slathering it until the squirrel was completely submerged. “So it’s more awful than gutting animals and scraping out their insides? More awful than stuffing heads and mounting them on people’s living room walls?”

  “Dad would hate this.” That much I knew; my father would’ve taken one look at that pile of sex organs and taxidermied parts and wanted to burn it all.

  “I’m glad.” An especially rough jab left a hole in the canvas. “Oh, damn it.” She wheeled around, chin set angrily. “My entire adult life that man told me what to do. What I could like, what was acceptable to talk about. It was like living inside a clenched fist.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, though I knew it was. “He just cared about you. He wanted what was best.”

  “I don’t have to care what he’d like, do I? He’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”

  Her pupils enlarged and swallowed up the rest of the irises. It felt as if I were yelling at a little kid and I didn’t have the patience, not with the two beers rolling around in my stomach. I wanted to go home and take a nap. “I’m heading up front. Find me when you’re ready.”

  I passed Lucinda on my way out. She was leaning against the counter, talking on her phone. I knew she must have heard us arguing, and I felt embarrassed that she’d know the intimate details of our personal business. Then I got angry, wondering why she’d let a woman who was obviously in need of a grief counselor mess around with a bunch of genitalia and dead animals.

  She waved her hand excitedly toward the middle of the room, across the black lacquered floor. She mouthed the word amazing. Gave me a thumbs-up, then gestured again.

  The boar I’d brought the week before stood upright on a platform, sliced down the middle. Intestines spilled from either side, liquid red that actually puddled onto the floor with a splattering sound that came from a speaker lodged in the ceiling. It wore a stethoscope, which dangled down and ended in a spangled resonator bedazzled with a ton of clear crystals. Grossly enlarged phalluses sculpted from what looked like Play-Doh were rammed into the intestinal bits. The boar’s tongue had been yanked from its jaws, pulled out and draped to the side, painted the same viscous red, cartoonish in its slavering. One of its own intestines had been pulled to the front and hung from the other side of its mouth alongside a horrifically large flesh-toned dildo. Its eyes had been replaced with two green objects. I wasn’t quite able to make out what they were.

  I turned back to Lucinda. “What’s this?” I held up two fingers to my own eyes, and then pointed them over at the dismembered boar.

  She leaned over the desk to hit a switch. Bulbs flickered and lit the animal from the inside, blinking spastically—red and green, snaking around the intestines and puddling down on the floor. The eyes glowed witchy, stared down hard at me over the two yellow tusks that remained untouched.

  “She found them in her attic.” Her eyes widened and she nodded emphatically, glasses sliding down her nose. “Christmas lights. Your mother is a genius.”

  MACACA RADIATA—BONNET MACAQUE

  At eleven years old, I’d never had a pet of my own. Countless dogs littered our home, running wild when they weren’t out hunting with my father, skulking the property around our dead-end street like a pack of sugared-up children. There was the Pomeranian, Sir Charles, but that dog would bite anybody that wasn’t our mother. If we were lucky, sometimes Milo and I might find a clutch of feral kittens hidden beneath the shed out back. They were black and calico-speckled, eyes milky with pus. We tried to name them, but by night they went back to being homeless. Our father wouldn’t let us keep them.

  Too many fleas, he said.

  For Christmas, I asked for something wriggling. I didn’t care what. It could have been one of the tarantulas I’d fondled down at the pet store or the lizards basking on their fake rocks. I liked the tiny frogs with their neon skins, smaller than my thumbnail. Gerbils. A turtle. I just wanted something I could hold; something that would move and breathe and reciprocate my affection.

  What the hell do we need another animal for? my father asked, half asleep in his recliner. He looked groggy, in and out of naps all afternoon, buried beneath a mound of blankets. There’s too many bodies in this house as it is.

  The months leading up to the holiday had been tense. Our father was home most afternoons, grumpy and sick. His skin, always too oily, had turned dry and papery, and his normally wild head of hair had diminished along his skull until he’d shaved off the whole mess. He’d even gotten rid of his mustache. It scared me, seeing that stranger’s face in my living room. Milo and I stayed away from th
e house when he was there, unsure what might set him off. He yelled when we talked too loud, told us things smelled funny. I overheard him throwing up in my parents’ bathroom and groaning like he was about to die. When I asked my mother what was happening, she told me he’d caught a bug.

  We’re going bankrupt, Milo whispered one night as we hid out on the back porch. Our father was yelling about something for the third time that night and our mother was trying to calm him down. That happened to a kid’s family from school and then the parents got divorced.

  I don’t think we’re broke. Dad hadn’t been at work, but there were still a lot of regulars. He’d gone in only two days that week before spending the rest of his time holed up in the bedroom. I walked down the hallway quiet as a ghost, sure my footsteps might wake him. He’d piled on several different quilts even though the house was humid and stifling that winter.

  My mother looked almost as worn out as he did. She called our aunt more than ever, and she did that only when she was really stressed. It’s not going well, I heard her say into the phone as she snuck a cigarette. She blew quick puffs of it out the open kitchen window. He can’t stand being helpless.

  Strength was important to our father, in all areas of his life. He kept himself fit using a weight-lifting set in our carport. He used hand strengtheners regularly, working the muscles in his palms and fingers. His body was his temple, the thing that enabled him to do the work he loved most. You can’t be a taxidermist if you don’t have the right body for it, he told me, pointing out the strong line of his biceps. Gotta cut through meat. Gotta saw through bone.

  My father was tall, but we both had the same type of body: naturally muscular and built like bulldogs. My brother, willowy and slight, could barely lift the smallest barbell over his head. Our father tried to get him to work out, but Milo wasn’t interested. He liked reading. He wanted to spend his time playing video games. He talked about his feelings in a way that made my father cringe. Strength is here, too, my father told me, tapping his temple. Can’t be strong in your body if you’re not strong in your mind.

  On Christmas morning our parents sat with mugs of coffee, sweat beading their temples as we opened gifts out on the back patio, the only place in our house where we could actually fit a Christmas tree. Our mother liked to decorate all the taxidermied pieces inside. She put Santa hats on the deer mounts and hung tinsel from the squirrels. Shiny red bulbs dangled off the ears of the arctic fox that my father kept in the den.

  Milo and I sat cross-legged on the floor. The wrapping paper adhered to our sticky fingers, the cheap dollar-store kind with colors that melted onto our hands, giving us radioactive fingerprints that smeared onto everything we touched.

  Oh my God, my mother crowed, as I pried open a thrice-recycled J. C. Penney box. Amid the tornado of white tissue paper was a crimson sweater set. You’re gonna get a lot of use from that. So pretty. She grabbed it and held it up to my chest. Wow, beautiful.

  My mother bought me stuff that would never leave the house, much less have the tags removed. Sometimes Brynn would take things I didn’t want, like the makeup or the gummy lip gloss that always smeared my chin, but most of the clothes were too big for her skinny frame.

  Milo opened packages of socks and underwear, several knives, and a killer sharpener that would make its way into my bedroom. The last gift my father set in front of me, wrapped in butcher paper. He was sitting pale in the sunlight, barely able to sip his coffee. It scared me to see him looking so sick—my mother kept reaching over and rubbing at his thigh with her hand, as if she were trying to warm him up.

  C’mon. Let’s see it. He used the tip of his finger to pry open an end, Scotch tape already pulling free in the humidity. My heart beat hard inside my chest as I envisioned a little buddy that would live in my bedroom. The box was too small to hold a puppy, but I thought they might have gotten me an iguana, or even one of those desert tortoises that could eat lettuce from the palm of your hand. Milo looked over, eyes darting between the box in my lap and our father, who’d handed him nothing.

  Fur poked from the flap at the top. I pulled out a monkey dressed in a top hat and tails. It had a monocle over one brown, beady eye. It looked a lot like Mr. Peanut.

  You like it? My father tickled the fuzz that tufted the top of its minuscule cravat. My dad made it for me when I was your age. Now it’s yours.

  A silk rose was pinned to its tuxedo jacket. It was very well rendered: the mouth proportioned perfectly, teeth set in even white lines. Its tail curved around its body, swirling into a gentle swoop that wrapped around the top of a tiny lacquered cane. I stared at its small, snickering face and wanted to throw it off the porch. It looked just like the monkey from that movie that gave everyone the plague.

  Thanks, I love it, I said, trying to hide my disgust. Its fur felt too slick, like it was wet.

  I held it gingerly as my brother ate pink and yellow Pez straight from a Batman-shaped dispenser. My mother gathered up the breakfast plates, gluey with cinnamon roll remnants, juice glasses peppered with pulp dried along their sides. Staring down at me, my father took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. His lips were pale and there was a bright red sore in the crease.

  Where’s mine? Milo asked, shuffling on his knees in the wreck of wrapping paper. Do I get something special from Grandpa too?

  Our father got up without responding and left us out on the porch.

  You wanna hold it? I held out the monkey and wiggled it, the hat flapping back and forth on its head.

  Milo sucked his lip between his teeth and blinked rapidly. Keep it, he said. It’s ugly.

  That night my father cleared a space on the shelves opposite my bed, shoving down the music box with the ballerina that twisted awkwardly to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth and the Russian nesting dolls that told the story of the three bears. He set the monkey, named Captain Peterbrook, smack in the center. The monkey leaned on its cane, one spindly arm permanently raised to its monocle.

  Now that looks pretty good. My father adjusted it a few more times, carefully twisting the body so it’d get the best light. He coughed and leaned against the wall for a second before adjusting the monkey again. There. Perfect.

  My parents left the door open as they always did, light from the hall coming in to cast a glow across the popcorn ceiling. A stripe lit Captain Peterbrook, who looked like an escapee from a mental asylum. I turned and focused on the opposite wall, trying not to think about the monkey climbing down in the middle of the night, its cane tapping lightly against the floor. I was still awake an hour later, listening to the murmur of my parents’ voices from the living room.

  If I get through this, it’ll be a miracle.

  Could you please stop. My mother’s voice sounded thick, as if she’d been crying. Just for one day. It’s Christmas.

  I am telling you, I will never do this again. There’s no goddamn way.

  Captain Peterbrook leered down at me from its perch, teeth bright and sharp.

  Brynn loved it. She rocked it like a baby and cooed nonsense at its ugly face, wanting to undress it like a Barbie doll. His little outfit! It’s so sweet! She clutched it too tightly to her chest and its hat dislodged. If you don’t want him, can I have him?

  I didn’t want the monkey, but I worried what my father would say if he saw it missing. He hadn’t gone into work the entire week after Christmas. His face was gaunt as a skeleton. The red chafing at his lips had gotten so bad he’d started rubbing Vaseline on the corners. Just play with him when you come over.

  She pulled a plastic comb from her purse and brushed the fine, soft fur of its belly under its tuxedo jacket. The monkey lay facedown on her lap, one of its sly hands partly up her skirt. I’ll take such good care of him, I promise.

  A frog tank would have fit perfectly on the shelf, or even a cage for a hamster. Instead there was only the monkey, a pinched, ugly thing with its dusty coat of fur and its creepy undertaker’s suit. It was the exact opposite of what I’d wanted—something warm and
loving, something brand new that could’ve been only mine.

  Brynn took the monkey to school and let everyone have a turn playing with it. By the end of the day, it was completely undressed. There were bits of it on the school bus, fur lining the floor, sticking to people’s shoes. Without its clothes, it looked more human and ashamed. There were holes in its neck from where the tuxedo shirt had detached. I felt like crying to see it like that, all bare and helpless.

  Alone in my room, I stared at the empty space on the shelf where the monkey used to live. Something living—a lovebird, even a goldfish—would have made any of this seem more bearable. I took the other taxidermied pieces from my room and tossed them under the bed: the hummingbird sipping at a delicate pink hibiscus, my orange kitten with its eyes sealed shut, the deer skin I kept at the foot of my bed the way someone might throw a blanket.

  I wrote Brynn’s name in Sharpie on the bumper of my sneaker, next to my own. I connected our names with fat, lopsided hearts, pressing my fingers to my lips and then to the rubber. Then I scrubbed everything out until there was just a big black mess.

  5

  Lolee and I sat at the kitchen counter at my parents’ house playing Jenga and swapping period stories. They got progressively more graphic as we pulled the blocks free of the wobbling stack, placing them gently on top.

  “This one time I passed a clot the size of a garden slug. It got stuck to the side of the toilet. When I crushed it in my fingers, it felt like one too.” Lolee dropped her tile lightly, barely wiggling the tower.

  I poked at several likely prospects. “Once I pulled out a tampon in a public bathroom. When I threw it at the little metal garbage can, it fell on the floor and rolled under the stall. Landed next to a woman’s shoe.”

  “Never happened.”

  “Swear to God.”

  “Did she step on it?”

  A block slipped free and everything swayed, but didn’t tip. “She kind of kicked it a little.”