Still Life with Tornado(65)

Rose lived with her new husband, who was spending her Social Security checks on prostitutes. Two nights ago, the new husband, twenty years younger than Rose, brought home a prostitute who heard moaning from the bedroom where Rose was and the new husband told her to ignore it. She tried to go in, but he stopped her. She did her job. She got paid. When she left, she called the cops because, she said, “Something very weird is going on in that house. He has someone locked up or something.”

The police had to break the door down. They found Rose and called the ambulance. She told them the story. A year ago she fell, broke her hip, and this is what her new husband did: He came into her room and found her on the floor. He put her pillows under her head and left her on the floor. For one year, Rose lay on the floor eating food the husband threw in to her once a day. She scraped the food from the floor into her mouth. She pissed and shat where she lay. He threw a bucket of cold water over her every month or so. Her hair grew through the pillowcase. Her fingernails were long and curly. Her toenails had been rotten for at least a half a year. A lot of her body was necrotic.

I was lucky I even got to meet Rose before she died later that night.

It’s hard to believe that some people can be so cruel to other people. But then, it’s not. I work here. I see things. I know things.

And then I look in the mirror and there I am.

Pretending. Always pretending.





Name Tag



Carmen lives at her mom’s house one week and her dad’s house the other week. She has a bedroom in each house. At her mom’s she has to share with her little stepsister. At her dad’s she doesn’t have to share with anyone. She has two of everything. Two hair dryers, two flattening irons, two favorite cereal spoons, two sets of paints, two easels, two toothbrushes, two makeup kits, two pairs of slippers, two bathrobes. Her life is like Noah’s Ark. She still has two parents, but they still don’t get along. When I asked her about it back in sixth grade, she said, “It’s not like anyone died or anything.”

I thought that was a smart thing to say. Carmen has always handled life as it comes. If it had been her headpiece, I think she would have just shrugged it off and never looked for it. She’d have rolled one of her joints and forgotten it even existed.

If she’d have walked in on Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner and Miss Smith kissing like that, she would have kept her mouth shut.

I want to call her. I want to tell her I am about to walk into a divorce and I want to know if it’s anything like her tornadoes. I want to know what will be inside my divorce. Will there be a box of corn flakes? A family dog? Will there be a place for Bruce? Will we survive or will this be the end of our family?

It’s not like anyone died or anything.

? ? ?

Bruce is staying at the B&B on Pine. I’m walking down 17th Street. Dad is at home, being restructured. Mom is probably at home by now, too. Maybe she is restructuring Dad even more than he’s already been restructured.

When I think about it, I figure maybe it’s good timing. Maybe Dad can just take off and do something cool. Maybe he can move to California or Mexico or Wisconsin or something. Maybe he can figure out a way to stop being so angry inside. Or maybe he’ll just find some other sucker who lets him do all that stuff he did to Mom and Bruce and repeat the whole nightmare again. I already pity her, whoever she is. I already want to send her a letter and tell her about the sliver of tissue on the TV and how he doesn’t really care about baseball even though he pretends to care about baseball.

When I walk into the house, it’s silent. I go to my room and grab a hoodie because it was chilly last night. I don’t hear Dad in his room, talking, typing, nothing. I don’t hear Mom in her room. The door is open. I peek inside and she’s not there. I stop by the kitchen and they aren’t there, either.

The door was unlocked when I came in, but I decide to lock it on my way out.

On my walk toward the B&B, I decide that Mom and Dad went out for a divorce. It’s better than getting one delivered, I guess. I decide that it’s not like anyone’s dead or anything.

On the street I find a name tag. It’s blank except for the preprinted part on top that says HELLO MY NAME IS. I pick it up and put it in the pocket of my hoodie. When I get to the B&B, I use the pen next to the guest book to write my name on the name tag.

I write: UMBRELLA. I stick the name tag to my hoodie.

Bruce doesn’t even see it until we’re in the Mütter.





The Soap Lady



Bruce pays my admission fee to the Mütter and we both stop at the entrance to breathe in the familiar smell. Old, weird things. That’s what the air smells like. Old, weird things.

Albert Einstein’s brain is as cool as it always is but this time I feel bad for Einstein. What’s his brain got to do with anything? I mean, take it out of his body and it’s just a blob of tissue. It can’t do anything without Albert—especially when it’s sliced twenty microns thin and slapped between slides so we can look at it.

The wet specimens are Bruce’s favorites. Just the name is awesome. Wet specimens. Babies in jars. Brains in jars. Tumors in jars. Body parts that can’t be used anymore being preserved so we can see weird shit on a Wednesday afternoon.

“Does that say Umbrella?” Bruce says as we walk from one exhibit to another. He points to my name tag.