The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (15 page)

The curl of night. Sunken. Low breathing underwater. Rising to the surface, pursued by a shark. Its jaws filled with popcorn. Or marbles. Teeth grinding marbles (cat’s eyes, jumbos, swirlies, aggies) the ones she used in grade school with Toby and the neighborhood boys. Toby who cheated; the boys who didn’t dare speak up. Marbles rubbing together, a clacking squeak.

McKenna opens her eyes to the black cliff of a bureau looming in the dark beside her head. The drawn curtains, sewn by Grandma Pencil from heavy burgundy bath towels, are outlined by silver moonlight. McKenna climbs from the bed. The wood is cold under her bare feet. Her throat is dry. The heating vent pumps acrid air. She can hear Snoodles yelling to her, “Mac! Mac! MacMac-MacMac!” But why does he sound so far away?

The digital clock reads 1:45 a.m. The wind brushes the chimes on the back stoop, a sprinkling of holy water for the ears.

The clock switches to 1:46. The dream noise returns—a slow breaking, a clack, a faraway but sharp sound. Perhaps Misty is in the kitchen, cooking dinner.

But Misty is dead, isn’t she?

Careful to lift the knob so it doesn’t protest, McKenna opens the door. She pads down the hall, past Mom and Dad’s room, Audrey’s room, the bathroom. At the top of the stairs, McKenna stops. Looks back to where she’s just walked. Shadows are wrong. Confused. That’s not Audrey’s door. It’s Grandma Pencil’s room. That’s not Mom and Dad’s door. It’s the bathroom. That’s not the bathroom. It’s a closet.

But the crunching—the hollow turmoil of destruction inside a mouth—
is
down there. At the bottom of the stairs. This is not a dream.

November.

Lollapalooza brought Audrey fame, fortune, and feet. It didn’t make her a house hold name—not yet—but she gained a rabid core of followers who bought tickets solely to see her per for-mances. The majority of her fans were the so-called slackers and Gen-Xers of the early-to-mid-90s—the un-generation, the un-colas, those cool-in-their-uncoolness readers of beat literature, computer manuals, and eastern philosophy who pumped gas for $4.05 an hour. Those questioners of everything whose questions asked nothing. Those anti-corporateers with hoop rings through their noses, onion rings in the backs of their vans, dirt rings in their bathtubs. These were the vast majority of Audrey’s fan base, and yet she had nothing in common with them, not even the adoration of herself and her gift. To the bitter end, she was disgustingly humble.

However, there was one exception to Audrey’s slacker followers—Herr Essenalles, the notorious German “eatist.”

Their first meeting took place on July 2, 1996. The stately, salt-and-pepper-haired Essenalles, sporting a pinstriped silk suit and a thick mustache, attended a Jim Rose Circus Sideshow in Portland, Oregon. He was so impressed that he sent Audrey a bouquet of Casablanca lilies and a $5,000 bottle of Gewürztraminer, with a note reading,
After we drink together, we shall eat together—From an Admirer
. Audrey, along with the rest of the United States, had never heard of Herr Essenalles, but after he bribed his way backstage that evening, she accepted his invitation to dine at the illustrious Chateau de Spree, where they spent two hours in intimate conversation, the exact content of which has never been known, but which shall nonetheless be re created here:

“You eat your soup so daintily,” he purred, his accent dripping onto the table. The candlelight flickered in his narrow eyes. “Not at all like your vaudeville routine.”

“What the fuck is vaudeville? I’m from Grand Rapids.”

“Ja, of course.” A pleasant, guttural chuckle that shakes the table. “What I mean is that you are like an animal on that stage. You have—what should I say?—
impulsion
in your gaze. No joy.”

Audrey belched into her hand. Under the table, she lifted her leg to massage her right stump. Her knee bumped his. They exchanged bashful grins—his toothy, hers teethy.

“You are not such an angry person,” Herr Essenalles said, wiping his mouth with the burgundy napkin. “It is acting, exactly as I had hoped. A persona for the stage. Such a kaleidoscopic beauty could not have the monster’s heart that they say.”

“I killed a doctor,” she said. She raised a butter knife to her lips, bit it in half and swallowed. “How do you know anything about my heart?”

He stared in wonder as she gulped the rest of the knife. This simple act alone would have taken him twenty minutes. The nerves in his chest and groin came alive.

Beneath the table, her hand grasped his knee.

“I’ve had a shitty life,” she said. Her teeth flashed again, this time not a smile. “Only one person really cared about me, and now she’s in Hell.”

Essenalles’s lip itched. He wanted to wipe the perspiration, but he was unable to move, unable to breathe. Sitting here in her grip was intoxicating agony. “History,” he managed to rasp, tears welling, “puts a saint in every dream.” Audrey, with the approval of Jim Rose, allowed Herr Essenalles unrestricted backstage access for the next five shows, after which the 52-year-old German gave an effusive interview to the
Los Angeles Times
. He praised Audrey Mapes as a “biological miracle,” “living evidence of evolution,” and a “window to the future of mankind.” The gist of his argument was that our century-long dependence on industry, chemicals, and artificial environs had created a new breed of human, one who could subsist entirely on man-made materials.

The article caused a minor stir in the United States, but a major stir on Moriarty Street. It inspired Toby to break a lamp with a karate kick. Murray got drunk on Maker’s Mark and sobbed through three “sick days” in front of the television. Grandma Pencil prayed her entire 1932 sterling silver rosary, a gift from the St. Monica nuns.

It was clear from the article that the unctuous kraut was smitten. Audrey’s family knew, simply from the words he used, that Audrey had slept with him. This didn’t sit well, but there was nothing they could do about it.

McKenna ate a banana for fourteen hours, but it had nothing to do with Audrey’s skeeziness. What was everyone so upset about? Audrey had never been a Pollyanna, never been pure. In ninth grade, she’d gone down on Bobby Merrick at the Comstock Park fireworks. In tenth grade, she’d lost her virginity to Markie Gearing. But oh yes, nobody knew about these transgressions. Nobody but McKenna, who actually cared enough to read her sister’s journal and find out what kind of girl was living under their roof.

UC Berkeley funded a team of doctors, medical students, and physiologists to examine Audrey. She participated willingly. Both her agent and The Jim Rose Sideshow, Inc. said it would be great for publicity. The only contractual stipulation was that Audrey should never eat any “non-food” in front of the research team. Not a bite. Her Lollapalooza performances would continue, but she would wait four hours before going to the lab.

The tests were rigorous and lasted an entire month. First, the researchers acquired Herr Essenalles’s medical records to use as a model of an exceptionally vigorous digestive system. Whereas his sphincter and stomach lining were unusually thick, and his mucus, hydrochloric acid, and pepsin were especially prolific and potent, Audrey’s tests revealed nothing abnormal. Her teeth, mouth, throat, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, biliary tract, large intestine (including ascending, traverse, descending, and sigmoid colon), rectum, and anus—all of it looked and acted “textbook.” The eggheads scratched their chins and wondered, as did everyone: “Even
if
you concede, hypotheti-cally, that she eats this stuff . . . which is of course ludicrous . . . Where the hell does it
go
?”

They examined her stool. They sliced it, diced it, blended it, smeared it on slides and read it under microscopes. They tested its chemical makeup, protein level, electrolytes, sugars, fats. They kept their eyes peeled for undigested hunks of glass, stainless steel, timber, sawdust, plastic, cardboard, Plexiglas, concrete, suede, leather. They found nothing of the sort. They’d been given a list of all the materials Audrey consumed during her stage show. Her poop confirmed none of it. There should have been high levels of some very toxic elements. The picnic table, for instance, made of pressure-treated wood, would have contained enough arsenic to kill ten people. And yet her waste revealed only the tracest amounts (approximately 0.010 parts per million), consistent with natural arsenic levels in California tap water. The researchers did find evidence of a chili dog, French fries, green grapes, a chocolate shake, apple juice, macaroni and cheese, and real dairy butter.

So Audrey was receiving nourishment from actual food. Ah ha! Not surprising to the researchers. More surprising if you’d grown up with her, in which case you knew that she ate so-called “real” food only sparingly. Perhaps she needed food to live, perhaps not. The family never checked. Maybe she was being social. Maybe she didn’t want to appear rude when the co-freaks asked her to hit Denny’s after a long day of grossing out the masses.

They sampled her digestive fluids. Drew blood. Charted her breathing, heart rate, cholesterol level, blood pressure, and body mass index. Measured her brain, arms, legs, fingers, hands, skull, chest. Sampled hair and skin. Performed throat cultures, counted antibodies. Completed a gynecological exam. They requested and received her entire medical history—birth records, hospital records, height and weight charts, vision tests, hearing tests, dental records, scoliosis screenings, immunizations. They tested her coordination, balance, reflexes, spatial sensitivity. They assessed her IQ, EQ, math and verbal skills, and personality type. They snapped photographs of everything—in close-up, wide shot, and shots for perspective and scale.

Normal, normal, normal. Maddeningly normal. Excruciatingly normal. Audrey was the human equivalent of the center of the center yellow line. In every area, she represented the statistical mean, to within a fraction of a decimal. Disgustingly representative. Putridly unremarkable. Rancidly ordinary. None of the researchers had ever seen anyone so normal. Her only abnormal feature was her missing feet, but even this turned out to be a dead end. Congenital birth defects were almost always accompanied by some additional aberrance—a weakened heart wall, poor circulation, breathing problems, brittle bones. But for Audrey, the defect appeared to be anomalous, affecting nothing.

She was unnerving, this run-of-the-mill, standard, fence-sitting girl. She was living, breathing par. They checked and rechecked their data. Tested and retested. They pulled out their hair. They hurled books. They couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. One despondent young man called a suicide hotline and checked into a safe house. The chances of a person being so statistically average in so many areas? Simply calculating those odds would require three or four calculators taped together.

With tears in their eyes, they pleaded with Audrey to “eat something crazy” under rigorous scientific observation. Viewing this pro cess, they were certain, would expose her uniqueness.

“Do you really want to be
average
?” they asked, grimacing, as if merely uttering the word made them angry.

“Everyone is special,” they goaded. “Didn’t you ever watch
Sesame Street
?”

They positioned bowls of sparkling test tubes, like shiny candies, on the counter. Then they exited the lab to “answer an important call.” (Could they have known how this image, the snack food in a bowl, turned her stomach?) They tempted Audrey with handmade mahogany chairs. They “accidentally” ripped their lab coats on the corners of desks: “Whoops. That’s a shame. Now I’ll have to throw away this perfectly delicious garment.” Long, slow walk to the garbage chute. “Too bad there’s nothing else we can do with it.” Disappointed, wistful glances as they slunk out the door.

Audrey never budged. The researchers were allowed to attend her Lollapalooza performances, so every day they scribbled in their note pads, pushed their glasses to the tops of their noses, whispered to one another, bobbed and weaved behind towering slackers to get an unimpeded view of Audrey’s mouth, throat, and chest as the items went down.

When the month expired, the elaborate, costly study was deemed “inconclusive.” That’s what they wrote in the literature, anyway.

In person, the exhausted, demoralized researchers didn’t hide their “humble” opinion:

Audrey Mapes was a goddamned hoax.

The public debate began. Audrey was prof led (usually a couple of paragraphs), in local newspapers along the Lollapalooza tour. She received minor mentions in
Rolling Stone
,
Spin
, and
Modern Woman
. In Grand Rapids, Murray snipped every article and videotaped every TV reference. He and Toby pored over the clippings at the dinner table.

Ripley’s Believe it or Not
aired an eight-minute segment, consisting mostly of low-budget “reenactments” of her stage act. Four of Toby’s muscle-bound buddies came over to watch the episode. They scoffed, “That actress isn’t half as hot as your sister, dude.”

(Did they realize that the pigtailed young woman squashed on the end of the couch, watching the show with them, was also Toby’s sister?)

McKenna collected the articles, too, on the sly. At Grandma’s house, these were considered contraband. McKenna hid them beneath her mattress and studied them by moonlight.

The famous magician duo, Krebs and Jenner, known for come-dic and gory (yet intellectual) illusions and for debunking anyone who claimed to have psychic powers, appeared on
Later with Greg Kinnear
in early September. It was a tense moment for the Mape-ses when Greg asked, “So what do you think about this Lolla-palooza girl who, like, eats trumpets and scuba gear?” (Audience laughter.)

Ponytailed Krebs, in his pinstriped suit, one leg crossed onto the other, stroked his chin beard and insisted glibly, jovially, smugly: “It’s a trick, Greg. A good trick, but just a trick.”

As proof, his mousy partner Jenner produced a sledgehammer and obliterated a pile of coconuts. Then, in front of the live studio audience, Jenner ate the sledgehammer.

After the commercial break, Krebs revealed that the hammer was made of hollow milk chocolate. The real sledgehammer had been slid into Jenner’s pant leg through sleight-of-hand, which Jenner then demonstrated. The audience whooped.

Murray erased that tape.

Out in the real world of Middle America, folks gave their two cents to the local news: “There’s no way she’s eating this stuff!” Others declared with equal passion: “She
does
eat it! I saw her in Denver! I don’t know how it works, but it’s true.” A small minority said, “Who cares if it’s real or not? It’s damn good entertainment.”

Audrey never gave an interview. She would have done so if she’d wanted to. No one was controlling her; no one was telling her what to do (as some have suggested). Jim Rose, however, defi-nitely fueled the fires of mystery. To him, silence was gasoline. At every turn, he advised Audrey to keep quiet while the debate raged. Let our publicist do the talking, he said. A personal interview will kill business. You’re an enigma, he said. A conundrum. A bugaboo. Let people pay full price and judge for themselves.

To this end, cameras were never allowed under the tent. Jim Rose warned against doing TV appearances, which would allow scrutiny of every move in painstaking detail.

Even without interviews or TV appearances, Audrey’s fame grew. For this, I credit her cover-girl good looks—the innocent face, the porcelain skin, the curved lashes, the Farrah Fawcett hair, and the liquid eyes haunted by a touch of sadness. Men like the troubled beauty. Men also like a girl with an appetite, especially one who keeps quiet after she eats. Her footlessness was rarely mentioned.

Kalamazoo took pride in “Lollapalooza’s Eating Girl,” whom they touted as “locally born.” They welcomed every roving reporter who happened into town. City officials gave guided tours of The Caboose and provided names and contact information for all of Audrey’s arty high school/college friends and the professors who’d taught her during those two months. Eventually, newshounds sniffed their way north to Grand Rapids, to Moriarty Street.

Murray wouldn’t answer the door. Toby dropped water balloons from the roof. Faithful old Snoodles, not long for this Earth, yapped and pawed at the living room window. McKenna and Grandma Pencil drank tea on Grandma’s back patio, looking up the street, watching the white vans come and go.

Lollapalooza was only a summer tour, but when it ended in September of 1996, Audrey didn’t return to Moriarty Street. She didn’t notify her family of her decision; she simply didn’t show up. Three months passed. At Christmas, Murray received a collect call ( jab) from Germany. Audrey was living with you-know-who. That’s what she said: “I’m living with you-know-who.” She wouldn’t even say the guy’s name. Over the following year, the Mapeses received two postcards with nothing written on the back except
Audrey
.

In the summer of 1997, she signed on with Lollapalooza again. She performed for full crowds, but this time around, the novelty had worn off. The shock value was gone. When the tour ended, she flew back to Germany with Johann, and the Mapeses wondered if they would ever see her again.

But then, one month later, in October of 1997, Audrey returned to Moriarty Street for the first time in seventeen months. She strode up the cracked walkway. Strode. As in, without crutches and without hesitation. Speed-walker, almost. The design of her new artificial feet made her resemble a Greek God—specifically, Pan. Half goat.

What ever the Jim Rose sideshow paid, it must have been good. Her new feet cost more than the house she entered.