Barbara the Slut and Other People (6 page)

After Patricia, Boss Donna, and Louisa left at four, Louisa called to tell me that Patricia had lied and was really going to a job interview. Before Pregnant Patricia was Pregnant Patricia she was Fat Patricia, because she was fatter than anyone else, even me. Fat Patricia and the women who had been working at the clinic for four years or six years or eleven years sent out their resumes from the fax machine whenever Boss Donna was out of the office, but no one had gotten a new job in the ten months I had worked there. Even though I was going to leave the job and hopefully the city and the state when my lease was up in two months, I imagined myself doing STD screenings when I was seventy. If I gained five pounds a year eating the donuts that the drug reps brought, I would be enormous by then.

•   •   •

A little before seven, Mike Anonymous came back with a woman. She was tall and black and didn’t look like I would have expected her to look, if I had expected to see her. She had perfect teeth and perfect skin, and she had purplish-blue contacts.

Mike said he had an appointment. I was starting to understand his accent well enough. I looked at Melissa, who was working the front desk with me.

“You were already here,” I said to Mike.

Mike said he wanted to give the woman his appointment, and when I said we canceled it, he said she would wait for a same-day appointment.

“I ain’t waiting,” the woman said.

“Hang on,” I said.

I went to the back and asked Eunice what to do. She looked at the clock. We had to take walk-ins until seven and it was six fifty-four.

“Fuck,” she said.

Back at the front, I gave the woman an intake form and an STD questionnaire, and she filled them out with her back to Mike. Melissa entered her into the computer and I put her chart together and brought her in.

Her name was Marla Jones. Marla Jones looked like she was twenty but the birthday in her chart made her thirty-eight. She wasn’t wearing makeup and she wasn’t wearing a miniskirt. She was wearing jeans and a puffy coat.

Marla had answered all of the questions in loopy handwriting. I asked her the standard counseling questions, like whether she was ready to get a negative or positive result in fifteen minutes, and what she would do either way. The only question that wasn’t standard was whether she felt like she was being forced to get tested, which we asked when patients were with their moms, and which seemed relevant now.

“I ain’t being forced,” she said, “I’m getting paid.”

I started the test and put Marla in a counseling room. I didn’t want to send her back out to wait with Mike Anonymous. When I got back to the lab, Eunice and Melissa were standing over the test. They made room for me and we all waited for the lines to come up. It worked like a pregnancy test: one line was good, two lines were bad.

The control line came up and then the positive line came up. Two lines.

I felt like air was rushing through my head. I sat down in the blood-drawing chair.

“Dear God,” said Eunice.

“I feel sick,” said Melissa. She left the lab.

“I need a minute,” said Eunice. She went back out to the clinician’s station and put her head in her hands.

•   •   •

Soon I stopped feeling dizzy and felt empty, like this wasn’t real life, which was a relief. When Eunice was ready I followed her into the counseling room. Marla didn’t look up from her magazine.

“Marla? Hi, I’m Eunice.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Eunice sat down. “Are you ready for your results?”

“Yeah,” said Marla.

“Your HIV test was positive,” said Eunice.

“Yeah,” said Marla. She didn’t look up.

“Okay,” said Eunice. “Did you already know that you might be HIV positive?”

“Yeah,” said Marla.

“Are you currently under a physician’s care?” said Eunice.

“No,” said Marla. She looked up.

I gave Marla a card for the hospital’s AIDS care program. Eunice asked her how she was going to deal with her results tonight and tomorrow, and asked her about her support network, but Marla kept saying she was fine. Eunice told her that we were going to report the result under our mandated reporting protocol. She wanted to do a confirmation test before Marla left, but Marla said it was already confirmed.

“Okay,” said Eunice. “Will you call the program?”

“Uh-huh,” said Marla. “I got to go.”

“Okay,” said Eunice. “We’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

I walked Marla to the checkout desk. Mike Anonymous was waiting for her on the other side of the door.

“He’s paying,” she said. She opened the door to the waiting room and told Mike Anonymous that he needed to pay and that he owed her fifty bucks. He said he needed the results first.

“Hell no,” she said.

He said he was paying her so she had to give him the results.

“No,” said Marla. She walked past him.

He said that was the agreement.

“Okay,” said Marla. “Give me the money first.”

He handed her some cash and she started walking toward the door.

“Hey!” he said. But instead of following her, Mike Anonymous stormed our window, yelling that he needed the results.

“I think you should shut that,” I said to Melissa.

She closed the window, and we watched Mike yelling on the other side. He was yelling that we had to give him the results because he paid for the test and it was his money, so they were his results.

“We can’t give you the results,” I said through the glass. “It’s against the law.” I didn’t tell him that he hadn’t paid yet.

He was sweating again and he was crying. He yelled that he knew it was positive. Then he really started screaming, not words but just screaming. He ran into a row of chairs, knocking them over and falling on top of them.

I picked up the phone and pressed page. “I think we need help up here.”

By the time Eunice got to the front, Mike Anonymous had taken a couple of pictures off the wall and pulled down a set of track lights.

“Do you want me to call the police?” I said. We watched him through the window. He looked weaker. He knocked over the pamphlet display in slow motion and then sat down on a chair and put his head between his knees.

“Call them if I wave at you,” said Eunice. “I’m going to take him outside.”

She went out to the waiting room and took his elbow and helped him stand up. We watched her escort him outside. She looked older, like his red face set off her gray hair.

They left the building and walked across the parking lot. The streetlights lit them up and made shadows under their eyes and noses and chins. We could see Mike Anonymous shaking and shouting and then calming down again. Eunice tightened her grip on him and then loosened it. It made me want to cry that this old lady was showing him what was what.

She led him to a bench and activated the safety light on the side of the building. She had on her calmest face, but she was shivering. I wondered if I should bring her her coat but I didn’t want to interrupt. Mike put his head down again and Eunice talked to him, and I could hear her voice in my head. Her voice was very soothing and she had been the only clinician I wasn’t afraid of when I started working at the clinic.

Mike didn’t get worked up again, so Melissa and I closed the exam rooms and Melissa did the deposit and I put the pamphlet display back together and left a message for maintenance about the pictures and the track lights. When we were almost ready to go Eunice came back in alone and said that Mike Anonymous would be back in three months for a follow-up test.

•   •   •

When I got home Davey was mad about me working late and he made me help him clip the dog’s nails right away, before I had a chance to pee or open a bottle of wine.

“How was work?” he said, but it sounded like he meant,
I hate you for fucking up my day
.

“It was fine,” I said, hoping it sounded like,
I hate you for fucking up my life
.

I made cereal for dinner and Davey played Call of Duty. When I told him I was going to bed he waved at me, and then later he tried to wake me up to have sex with him. I was pretty asleep but I figured if we did it then, we wouldn’t have to do it while I was awake, and he would leave me alone for at least a week.

When he got on top of me the dog went under the covers. Davey was taking a long time to come and while he was working on it, I decided to tell him.

“I don’t want to live here anymore,” I said.

“Fuck,” he said. “That fucking dog is licking my feet. What did you say?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Vivian, what?” he said.

I pushed him out of me and closed my legs. “We had an HIV positive today.”

He tried to separate my legs again. “Don’t you have HIV positives all the time?”

“No. We never have HIV positives.”

I moved over and put my underwear back on.

M
y mom and I were going to stop to break up with my boyfriend on our way to Emerald Isle, but the muffler fell off of my car right before we got to the exit we needed to take to Raleigh, and my mom said we couldn’t stop anymore. I was driving, and I had been waiting for this exit for three hours, since we left home. I started crying and for a while I was crying so hard I could barely see. The car was so loud that I could barely hear either, and my mom was trying to talk to me but I didn’t care because I was mad at her for not letting us stop. Finally she got in my face and yelled, “PULL! OVER!” so I did and we switched seats. I cried for at least ten more minutes, which was more tears than it sounds like. My mom shouted over the noise that it was okay because we would get the car fixed when we got to Emerald Isle and I could stop in Raleigh to break up with James on the way back. I yelled that my vacation was ruined.

We had no choice but to spend the next three hours in silence, or obviously not in silence but not saying anything. My mom drove in the right lane. She put on her sunglasses and tried to ignore all the cars passing us and staring.

I had insisted on taking my car because I didn’t want it to look like my mom drove me to break up with my boyfriend. My plan had been to drop her off near James’s house and pick her up when I was done, but now all my plans had gone to shit.

When we finally got to Emerald Isle, my mom’s boyfriend, Mak, was unloading beer from his car, and my brother, Noah, was on a walk with the dog, meaning he was smoking weed somewhere and letting Petey chew on rocks. The three of them had left Virginia at the crack of dawn that morning because Mak was in a big hurry to get to North Carolina to play golf. My mom and I had waited to get our hair and nails done, because my mom wanted to look good for her boyfriend’s brother’s wife, and because I wanted to look good for when I turned single.

We were renting a house with Mak and Mak’s brother’s family, the Henderchenkos. They were the Henderchenkos because Mak’s brother used to be “Boychenko” and his wife used to be “Henderson,” and by combining they saved themselves six letters and a hyphen.

The house was smaller and crappier than I had imagined when my mom said we were getting a nice big house for everyone. There were only three bedrooms, and I guessed I was sharing with my brother, which left my mom and Mak in the second bedroom, and the Henderchenkos—Andy, Tina, and their son, Dylan—in the third. Unless Dylan was sharing with me and Noah, but I didn’t think my mom and Mak would do that to us.

We had been on Emerald Isle at the same time as the Henderchenkos for the past several years, but we had never shared a house. I liked them fine, but they were very serious people. They were always dressed up, even at the beach. Tina wasn’t as pretty as my mom, but she worked much harder at being pretty, and that somehow made my mom want to go get her hair and nails done. Andy was in much better shape than his brother because Tina didn’t let him eat carbs. Andy also had all of his hair, and I wondered if Tina had a hand in that as well.

The Henderchenkos got there shortly after my mom and I did, and we followed Mak outside to meet them. Mak and Andy hugged and thumped each other on the back. They looked like before-and-after pictures of the same man—the same face and the same height and roughly the same age, but Mak fat and bald and dressed like shit, and Andy thin with hair and wearing a polo shirt and khakis and a belt. If I were my mom I would have been disappointed to find out that I was dating the “before” brother and not the “after” brother, but she didn’t seem to mind. Tina was also wearing a polo shirt, with a khaki skirt and wedge sandals. She hugged me and my mom and Mak. Dylan got out of the car dressed like his parents. He didn’t look at anyone, and he ducked when Mak tried to tousle his hair. His mom made him say hi and he said it to the ground.

Dylan was twelve and seemed like he was two or three years away from realizing that he hated his parents. For now, though, he liked to sit as close to his mom as possible, and other than that his only hobbies were whining and watching anime. He had this weird energy that clearly came from the shows, like he was playing out the action sequences in his head at all times—cartoon creatures battling in midair, crashing into each other and throwing balls of fire, set to ominous music and slow-motion flashes and explosions.

The Henderchenkos toured the house and confirmed that Dylan would be sleeping with his parents by putting all of their suitcases in the room with the queen bed and the twin bed. Then Tina declared that the women needed to go shopping. Mak had gone to the store, but he had only bought beer, a loaf of bread, a pound of lunch meat, and a box of donuts.

I went with Tina and my mom, and on the way to the store they agreed that the house had been grossly misrepresented on the website, and talked about what the weather was supposed to do all week. My mom was using her polite voice, which she reserves for people in the service industry, my friends’ and Noah’s friends’ moms, and her own mother, from whom she’s been estranged for most of her life. I had never wondered if my mom and Tina were friends, but now I understood that they weren’t. I was worried that I was going to have to follow them through the store, listening to them talk politely about food, but when we got there they decided to split up.

“Can I take Natalie?” Tina asked my mom. “I haven’t seen her in so long.” She put her arm around me.

“Sure,” said my mom. “I’ll meet you guys up front.”

Tina started in fruits and vegetables. “So,” she said, “how’s school?”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“You’re majoring in international relations?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I don’t have to decide until next year.”

“The sooner you decide, the better,” she said. “You should be looking for internships for next summer.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I heard you have a boyfriend,” she said.

“Sort of,” I said. “I’m trying to break up with him.”

“Oh no!” she said. “Why?”

“He’s very serious about me. Very, very serious.”

“But that’s a good thing,” said Tina.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well I obviously don’t know this guy,” she said. “But you need to think strategically, Natalie. You need to find a good man in college, because after that all you’ll find is bums.”

Maybe she was right, but I would rather be single for the rest of my life than be with James.

•   •   •

That night the grown-ups got drunk. Noah went for another “walk” with Petey, and I spent the night reading in bed. Around midnight I went downstairs for a glass of water and found the four of them plastered. Tina told me how much she and Andy loved me and how smart I was and how pretty I was. Mak told me he would love me more if I played golf or really any sport. My mom kissed me good night and sat back down with her arms around Mak.

Early the next morning I woke up to someone starting a racing car. I lay there for a moment trying to block out the noise, but it was too loud. Noah had come home at some point and was fast asleep with pink earplugs in. Petey was awake and looking out the window and wagging his tail. I opened the bedroom door at the same time my mom opened hers. Petey jumped on her.

“I think that’s my car,” I said.

“No shit,” she said.

We went downstairs and out to the porch. Mak had jumper cables between his car and mine, and was trying to start them both.

“Honey!” my mom yelled over the noise. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Mak turned off my car. He looked very hungover or possibly still drunk. He was wearing golf shorts and a wifebeater.

“My car is dead,” he said.

“You hear that noise, right?” said my mom.

“Yeah,” said Mak.

“You remember that the muffler fell off?”

“Yeah,” said Mak.

“Okay. Well. Why don’t you take her car and drop it off at the place near the golf course?”

“Fine,” said Mak.

“No!” I said. “He’s drunk, he’ll crash it.”

“If he did he would be doing you a favor,” said my mom.

Mak transferred his golf bag to the trunk of my car.

“Ugh,” I said.

Mak started my car and backed out and drove away. I was pretty sure the whole island was awake now.

“Don’t even ask,” said my mom.

We went upstairs and back to bed.

When I got back up the women and the boys were eating breakfast. Tina and Dylan Henderchenko were eating fruit, and my mom and my brother were eating Lucky Charms. Dylan had clearly been crying at some point in the last ten minutes.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Not a whole lot,” said my brother.

I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms and sat down.

Dylan started crying. “How come she gets to eat them?” he howled.

My mom looked at me and rolled her eyes. “What’s up is Tina and Dylan are going to the amusement park, Noah is going on a hike with Petey, Mak is still golfing, and Andy is going to take a rest day.”

A couple of summers ago, my mom started letting Noah take hikes instead of going to the beach. Not coincidentally, that was the year he turned thirteen and started smoking weed. My mom and Mak knew what he was doing, but they didn’t care. My mom had been a pothead in high school and Mak still smoked, and they thought it was better than drinking. At first they said he couldn’t do it in the house, and on cold nights my brother would put a sweatshirt on Petey, put a parka, a ski mask, and goggles on himself, and they would go for walks. The second winter Noah started smoking in his room, and I didn’t know whether he thought nobody noticed or he just didn’t care.

“Can I go on the hike with Noah and Petey?” said Dylan.

“No,” said Tina.

“Why not?” he said.

“Uh,” said Tina and looked at my mom.

“I don’t want to go to the amusement park,” he said.

He said it so sincerely that I almost felt bad for him.

“Well,” said Tina. “I’m sure Noah doesn’t want you to tag along.”

“I don’t mind,” said Noah.

“I guess I could go with you guys,” said Tina.

“No!” said Dylan. “Noah gets to go by himself!”

“Noah is sixteen,” said Tina. “You’re twelve.”

“I’m almost thirteen,” said Dylan.

“You turned twelve last month,” said Tina. “Let me think about this.”

“It’s obviously not my call,” said my mom, “but I know Noah would take good care of him and not do anything stupid. Right, honey?”

“Yeah,” said Noah.

Dylan lunged at his mom with his hands together, begging.

“I’ll talk to your father,” said Tina. She turned to my mom. “If the kids go hiking, we could get mani-pedis.”

“I would love to, but I just got one,” said my mom.

“We could get lunch,” said Tina.

“I promised Natalie I would go to the beach with her,” said my mom. “Maybe another day?”

•   •   •

While Tina and Andy deliberated, Noah went out for a short walk, my mom packed lunches for everyone, and I went upstairs to put on my bathing suit. Dylan watched a show in the living room. Apparently he was usually allowed to watch one show a day, but since it was vacation he was allowed to watch two. I walked through the living room and Dylan screamed at me.

“You made me miss a part!” he said. “Now I have to rewind it and watch it again!”

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry.”

From what I could tell, he watched a lot more than two shows a day. The night before, I heard him watching on a computer in his room. His parents didn’t seem to notice. They thought he was the smartest kid ever. I didn’t think he was that smart, but he was probably too smart to be trusted. If he were my kid, I would never have let him out of my sight. Best case, he would watch anime until he had a seizure, worst case, who knows.

Finally Tina came downstairs with a verdict. Dylan could go on the hike with Noah for a maximum of four hours. Every hour, on the hour, he would call Tina to check in. He would take Andy’s cell phone. When the four hours were up, the boys would come back to the house. On their way back they could stop at the convenience store to get a snack, but they had to come home to eat it, no loitering.

Dylan was flying around the room, not hearing the instructions. Tina had to sit him down and repeat them.

“I really think they’ll be okay.” My mom stared at Noah.

“We’ll be fine,” said Noah.

The boys left for the park, Tina left for town, and my mom and I left for the beach.

“Tina will never speak to me again if Noah gives Dylan weed,” said my mom.

“He won’t,” I said.

“That kid could really use some weed,” she said.

“Maybe, but Noah isn’t going to give it to him,” I said.

•   •   •

We lay on the beach and my mom read and I listened to music. I liked to listen to one song on repeat, and for the past week or so I had been listening to this song from the seventies.

My mom went in the water and then sat on my back. “What’re you listening to?”

“This song called ‘I’ve Never Been to Me,’” I said.

“I know that song,” she said.

“You do?” I said.

“Yeah, the one about not having kids?”

“No, it’s about traveling.”

“No, it’s about not having kids. The singer regrets all of her sleeping around and traveling around and stuff.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“You’re the one listening to it,” she said. “Why don’t you listen to the lyrics?”

“I am, it’s all these names of places.”

“Nat, I know that song. It was popular when I was in college. All my girlfriends hated it.”

I listened a few more times and decided I still wanted it to be about traveling. I wanted to break up with James and go to any of the faraway places in the song: Monte Carlo, Nice, the Isle of Greece.

•   •   •

I met James my first week of college, and we dated all last year. I stopped liking him a little bit over winter break, when he called every day and I started dreading his calls. When we were at school I didn’t mind hanging out with him every day, and every night for that matter. I had sort of had boyfriends in high school, but none who wanted to hang out with me day and night, and none who left me little notes, and none who really, really liked going down on me. I guess there were some red flags, but I didn’t know what “red flags” were at the time, and my mom had to tell me what that term meant. The hanging out all the time was probably a red flag, as were the little notes, as was the fact that I would fall asleep while he was going down on me and he would just keep going. Anyway, I didn’t get sick of any of that until winter break, and then he wouldn’t stop calling, and suddenly I got sick of all of it at the same time. But when we got back to school he was so nice and I didn’t really know anybody else, so I didn’t break up with him but I made a lot of rules. We were only allowed to hang out every other day, and we were only allowed to spend the night every other time we hung out. I got the timing for this rule from my bathing rule as a kid—I had to take a bath every other day and wash my hair every other bath. As a kid it seemed like more than enough hair washing, and in college it seemed like more than enough James.