May We Be Forgiven

got Tessie a pizzle stick. And I gave the cat a catnip mouse—she loves them.”
    “I never thought of giving the pets toys,” I mumble.
    “They get bored and need something new—same as us,” he says, walking down the drive. “Call me if you need me. I’m fish-sitting not far from here.”

    T essie smells the overturned dirt. She lies on her back in the center of the yard and rolls on my pile of fresh-plucked weeds.

    A minute after the minder is gone, I accidentally flip a massive clot of rich black dirt into my eye, blinding myself. I paw at my face, trying to clear it. I use my shirt, get up too fast, and step on the trowel, throwing myself off balance. I crash into the barbecue and rebound—mentally writing the headline: Idiot Kills Self in Garden Accident. It’s Tessie who guides me to the stair, with me holding on to her collar, saying, “Cookie, cookie, let’s go find a cookie.” In the downstairs half-bath I let myself have it. “Shit face,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror, thinking it is really possible that I didn’t flip dirt into my eye but shit of some sort: Tessie shit, kitty shit, raccoon or deer shit—whatever it is has a funky smell, like fancy cheese, cheese so rare and ripe that they keep it in its own cave and bring it out only for royal holidays. I have one eye open and am looking at myself in the mirror, giving myself a talking to, remembering another time when I looked in the mirror, I literally dissolved—the stroke.
    “Don’t stare,” I say to myself. “You have that dumb look like you don’t even know what I’m talking about, like it’s all a big surprise. How could it be? Just because you’re hearing this out loud for the first time doesn’t mean it’s new information. I’ve been talking to you for weeks, really more like years, or the entirety of your whole goddamned life, you fucking idiot.”
    “Why are you talking to me this way?” I ask.
    “Because you don’t hear it any other way, you want it to be all touchy-feely. You fucked up, your sister-in-law is dead, your brother is in an insane asylum, and you want me to make you feel good about yourself? Wake the fuck up—you are a disaster. You’re even more dangerous than your brother; the fact that he’s in there and you’re out here, on the loose, proves it.”
    My head slams into the wall. Slam. As though somehow it is just happening, as though someone else is doing it. Slam. Slam.
    “Why did Jane call me when she wanted to know where the light bulbs were, why was I like the other half, the functional half of my brother?”
    “Are you blaming her?”
    “No,” I say.
    And now my head is not in the sink anymore, not slamming into the wall, it’s in the toilet, and there is pressure at the back of my neck; at first I think it’s a hand pushing me down, but then I realize my head is stuck under the rim of the seat.
    “Are you going to throw up? Are you sick of yourself now?”
    I don’t answer.
    The toilet flushes, soaking me, drowning me. I am waterboarding myself.
    Coughing, sputtering, I pull my head out of the toilet. I vomit. I am on the floor of the bathroom, wet, sour—silent.
    “Pouting?”
    I don’t answer.
    “Not talking to me? Should I stop?”
    “Say whatever you want, give me what you’ve got, bring it on. Clearly you’ve been sitting on it for a long time.”
    “Okay. Number one—how could you spend so many years writing a book on Nixon? It’s boring, it’s beyond boring, and it’s pathetic. I wouldn’t even care if you fucking failed, it’s the fact that you’ve done nothing that’s sent me over the edge.”
    “Is my book really that bad?”
    “It’s shit. You are shit. Your personality is necrotic, dying; it eats away at everything. Look at me, would I lie to you? I’m like a ghost from within trying to knock some sense into you.”
    “What do you want from me?” I ask, fearing this is all hurtling towards some inevitable end.
    “I want your life,” he says.
    And there is nothing more to say.
    The telephone is ringing.
    “Hello,” I say.
    “Is this you?”
    “Yes,” I say.
    “It’s me,” she says.
    “Claire?”
    “Who’s Claire?” she asks, her voice suddenly strict, as though insulted, as though I should have known.
    I go deeper into my own darkness, “Jane?”
    “How many are there?” she wants to know.
    “How many of what?”
    “Girls,” she says, “women, fuck buddies.”
    “Who is this?” I ask, frightened.
    “Why