My Name Is Venus Black(51)

Meanwhile, Mike is wrapped up with Curtis, so he’s rarely ever home. Which means I rarely ever eat dinner, and now I’m so skinny I look freakish—yes, even spider-like. I spend my afternoons and evenings lying on the couch like I’m sick, watching TV to numb my brain. I know I’m in trouble when I start to watch really dumb game shows.

On my day off on Monday, I get to watch soaps. Amazing how you can still follow the story watching just one day a week. My favorite is All My Children, perhaps because Tad Martin makes me think of Danny. The quirky confidence, the flirty sense of humor.

I still fantasize about finding a way to fix myself.

After a while, I feel guilty just lying around the house all the time, so I set up a system to survive my own lethargy. Every commercial break, I force myself to get up and do something useful, like wash the dishes, or make my bed, or make progress on a cleaning project around the house. And there are so many of those. I put new Con-Tact paper down in the kitchen drawers and under the sink. I find paint in the garage to patch up all the dings and marks on the walls. I ask Mike for money to replace the ratty drapes in the living room, but he says he doesn’t have it.



Bumping around that house alone, looking for projects, I keep thinking of Inez. She was always trying to find a new, cheap way to decorate. Because my bedroom was in the basement, it didn’t have a rug, so she used small carpet samples and double-sided tape to create a patchwork rug. Leo would only step on the squares that were solid colors and avoided the ones with shag mixes.

One of the worst ideas Inez ever had was when she covered an entire wall in the foyer with a mural—basically a giant photograph you paste on like wallpaper. It featured a small waterfall among ferns.

“I don’t get it,” I told her. “Is this supposed to look real? So people will think you have a waterfall just inside the house?”

She frowned at me. “It’s okay if you hate it, Venus,” she said. “I think it’s really nice. It’s supposed to make you feel refreshed and happy to see nature.”

“But isn’t nature supposed to be outside?”

She blew. “For God’s sake, Venus! Would you prefer blank walls everywhere?”

Ha. It’s funny now to think how her suggestion totally came true at Echo Glen. Five and a half years of blank walls without a single fucking waterfall has brought me around to her point of view.





It’s January 28 and I’m at work when it happens. I’m filling an enormous order for a woman who is angry that we are out of maple bars. “It’s only eight-thirty!” she declares. “How can you already be out of such a basic, important thing?”

I explain that we are just a little behind and more maple bars will come out from the oven soon, if she wants to wait. In the kitchen, we have a portable TV that’s rarely turned on, but this morning Julie and Gus, the baker, want to watch the launch of the Challenger shuttle. I’m too bitter about my own life to care.

The angry maple-bar woman continues to frown at me while I wait on other customers. When I get the chance, I go check on her maple bars—and happen to glance at the TV. A news anchor is reporting that the Challenger blew up shortly after takeoff. All day, every channel keeps showing the astronauts, the launch, and the sickening explosion. Over and over, the teacher Christa McAuliffe and the astronaut Judith Resnik and all the others explode into thin air.

All day, I feel a small worm of guilt about the jealousy I harbored toward the women on that crew. It strikes me as the saddest kind of tragedy possible. To have your big dream come true—only to have it turn into your worst nightmare. Not that they even knew what hit them.



* * *



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BY EARLY FEBRUARY, I’m so depressed that I struggle to see a future, much less want it. Sunny California seems closer at hand than ever before, given my savings. But with Piper gone, and with Danny out of my life—I feel so alone it aches as if a heavy stone is hanging from my rib cage.

I think of Anita and Arabella, two spiders NASA sent to space in 1973. It was an experiment to see if they could spin webs without gravity. It seems Arabella had trouble at first, and she spun sloppy webs. However, by the third day, both she and Anita were spinning webs just like those back home. Today, both of their spider bodies are on display at the Smithsonian.

When I first learned of the spiders back in grade school, their determination struck me as magical. Now I wonder what would have happened if there’d only been one spider in the first place. Would Arabella have gotten her groove back without Anita spinning next to her?

That’s kind of how I feel with Piper gone. Without her by my side, it’s harder to breathe, the air feels heavy, and I struggle for a reason to keep going through the motions of life.

One morning, I come downstairs in the dark and grab the Cheerios from the cupboard. I go to the fridge for milk and I’m pouring it over my cereal when I freeze. I set the carton down, disbelieving my eyes. The room begins to spin as I read what it says under Leo’s picture:

Missing: Leo Miller

From: Everett, Washington, February 9, 1980

DOB: August 7, 1972

Hair: blond

Eyes: gray

Estimated Height: 5'0"

Note: mentally handicapped



I think I might be sick or faint. None of this information is new, but still, here is proof that people who don’t even know us think there’s still a good-enough reason to hope that Leo is alive to go to all this effort.