The New Black (13 page)

One by one The Boys left home, tried to get as far away from their father as possible, until it was only The Twins left and then he started doing untoward things with them and it was a small town so people talked and it wasn't long before no one at all wanted a thing to do with Red Ikonen.

How Laura and Hanna became best friends

Laura Kappi grew up next door to the Ikonens. For a while in high school, she dated one of The Boys, but then he moved away, went to college, and didn't bother to take her with him. Laura was, in fact, a friend to both Hanna and Anna throughout high school. When Anna and Logan moved down to Niagara, Laura saw how lost Hanna was without her twin. She decided to do her best to take Anna's place. Hanna was more than happy to let her. They became best friends and then they became more than friends but they never talked about it because there wasn't much to be said on the subject.

How Hanna reacts when she sees her mother for the first time in sixteen years

Before they go inside, Anna reaches for Hanna's waiting hand. They both squeeze, hard, their knuckles cracking and then The Twins go inside. Ilse Ikonen is sitting on the edge of the couch. She is a small woman with sharp features. She has always been beautiful and neither time nor distance has changed that. Her hair is graying around the scalp, her features hang a bit lower, but she doesn't look a day over forty. Red is sitting where he always sits during the day, in the recliner next to the couch staring at his estranged wife. He has tucked in his shirt, but his hands are shaking because he is trying not to drink. He wants to be clear headed but his wife is so damned beautiful that with or without the drink he doesn't know up from down. Peter is sitting next to Ilse, also staring, because the resemblance between his wife and her mother is uncanny. They have never met. Anna's husband Logan is sitting next to Peter, holding their son, half asleep, in his lap. He is deliberately avoiding any eye contact with his mother in law. He is helping his wife with the burden of her anger.

As soon as they enter the room, Hanna and Anna's stomachs churn. Beads of sweat slowly spread across their foreheads. Ilse leans forward, setting her teacup on the coffee table. She smiles at her daughters. Hanna thinks, “Why did you offer her tea?” Anna thinks, “I was being polite.” Hanna bites her lip. “What are you doing here, Ilse?” she asks.

Ilse Ikonen uncrosses her legs and folds her hands in her lap. “It has been a long time,” she says.

Hanna looks at all the broken people sitting in her living room on her broken furniture looking to her to fix their broken lives. She turns around and walks right back out the front door. Anna makes her excuses and rushes after her sister. She finds Hanna holding on to the still warm hood of her car, hunched over, throwing up. Anna's stomach rolls uncomfortably. When Hanna stands up, she wipes her lips with the back of her hand and says, “I mean… really?”

How Laura finally convinces Hanna to run away with her

Hanna sits in her car until Ilse Ikonen takes her leave and gets a room at the motel down the street. After her mother leaves, Hanna drives to campus and goes to the dank room of one of her college boys. She lies on his musty, narrow twin bed and stares at the constellation of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling while the boy awkwardly fumbles at her breasts with his bony fingers. She sighs, closes her eyes, thinks of Laura. Afterward, when the boy is fast asleep, his fingers curled in a loose fist near his mouth, Hanna slips out of bed and heads back across the bridge to Laura's house.

Laura smiles when she opens her front door. Hanna shrugs and stands in the doorway, her cheeks numb, still nauseous. She shoves her small hands into her pockets, tries to ignore the cold. Laura wraps her arms around herself, shifts quickly from one foot to the other. “Why don't you come in?”

Hanna shakes her head. “I can't do this anymore.”

Laura arches an eyebrow and even though she is barefoot, she steps onto her snowy front porch. She gasps, steps onto Hanna's boots, slides her arms beneath Hanna's coat and around her waist. Laura lightly brushes her lips against Hanna's. Hanna closes her eyes. She breathes deeply.

How Hanna falls even more in love with Laura than she thought possible

When Laura can no longer feel her toes, she says, “We better get inside before I get frostbite and I am forced to spend the rest of my life hobbling after you.”

Hanna nods and follows Laura into her house. It is familiar, has looked mostly the same for the past twenty years and in that there is comfort. Inside the foyer, amidst coats and boots, a shovel, a knitted scarf, a bag of salt, Hanna sinks to the floor and sits cross-legged. Laura sits across from Hanna, extends her legs, resting her cold feet in Hanna's lap.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Hanna shakes her head angrily. “My mother's back.”

“I mean… really?” she says.

Hanna doesn't go home. She calls Anna and assures her sister that she's fine. Anna doesn't ask where she is. She's starting to make sense of things. Hanna lets Laura lead her up the steep staircase lined with books. She lets Laura put her into a hot bath. She lets Laura wash her clean. She follows Laura to bed and for the first time in months, she falls asleep in a mostly empty house. She thinks, “This is everything I want.”

As Hanna sleeps, Laura calculates how much money she has saved, the tread on her tires, how far they will need to travel so that Hanna might begin to forget about the life she's leaving behind. It all makes Laura very tired but then she looks at Hanna's lower lip, how it trembles while she's sleeping.

How it has always been

The next morning, Laura hears the knocking at her front door. She wraps herself in a thin robe and takes one last look at Hanna, still sleeping, lower lip still trembling. Laura has always loved Hanna even before she understood why her entire body flushed when she saw Hanna at school or running around her backyard or sitting on the roof outside her bedroom window. Dating one of The Boys a way to get closer to Hanna. Laura would kiss Hanna's brother and think of his sister, her smile, the way she walked around with her shoulder muscles bunched up. Being with the brother was not what Laura wanted but she told herself it was enough. For the first time Laura feels something unfamiliar in her throat. It makes her a little sick to her stomach. She thinks it might be hope. Downstairs, Anna is standing on the front porch shivering. She has a splitting headache. When Laura opens the door Anna quickly slips into the house. Anna squeezes Laura's hand and heads upstairs into Laura's bedroom. Anna crawls into bed behind her sister, wraps her arms around Hanna's waist. Hanna covers one of Anna's hands with hers. She is not quite awake yet.

“Don't make me go back there,” Hanna says, hoarsely.

Anna tightens her arms around her sister, kisses Hanna's shoulder. Anna says, “You have to go back to say goodbye.” There is a confidence in Anna's voice that reassures Hanna.

Hanna sighs, slowly opens her eyes. She sees Laura standing in the doorway. Hanna smiles. “You don't have to stand so far away,” she says. Laura grins and crawls into bed with The Twins. Laura says, “Remember when we were kids and the three of us would lay on your roof at night during the summer to cool down?” Both Hanna and Anna nod. The three women roll onto their backs and stare at the ceiling—the cracks and water stains, how it sags. “We were miserable even then,” Laura says.

How Hanna finally confronts her mother

Where Hanna has always been the protector, Anna has always been the voice of reason, able to make the right choices between impossible alternatives. When they were girls and Hanna would plot retribution against anyone who had wronged The Twins, it was Anna who would deter her sister from acting thoughtlessly. When Red Ikonen would stumble into their room drunk and Hanna would try to stab him with a kitchen knife or bite his ear off it was Anna who grabbed her sister's arm and said, “It's him or Superior Home.” It was Anna who would sing to her father and stroke his beard and soothe all the meanness out of him. In these moments, Hanna would feel so much anger inside her she thought her heart would rip apart but then she would let the knife fall to the floor or she would unclench her teeth because anything was better than Superior Home, the state facility where motherless children were often discarded until they turned eighteen. They heard stories bad enough to make them believe there were worse things than the stink of Red Ikonen's breath against their cheeks as he forgot how to behave like a proper father.

Anna held Hanna's hand as they walked back to their house, a bracing wind pushing their bodies through the snow. Hanna tried to breathe but found the air thin and cold and it hurt her lungs. As they climbed the porch stairs Hanna stopped, leaned against the railing, her body heavy.

“I don't feel so good,” she said.

Anna pressed the cool palm of her hand against Hanna's forehead. “You get to leave soon,” she said. “Hold on to that.”

Hanna stared at her sister. She said, “Come with us—you and Logan and the baby.”

Anna shook her head. “It's my turn to stay.”

“Bullshit. We've taken our turns long enough.”

The front door opened. Peter glared at The Twins. “Where the hell were you last night?” He grabbed Hanna by the elbow, pulling her into the house and she let him. She wanted to save what fight she had left.

In the living room the scene closely resembled the tableau Hanna stumbled into the previous day with Ilse Ikonen sitting on the couch, poised regally like she had never left and had no need to offer acts of contrition.

Hanna tried to squirm free from Peter's grasp and he finally relented when calmly, quietly, Anna said, “Let go of my sister.” Peter held a natural distrust of twins. It wasn't normal, he thought, for there to be two people who were so identical. He also harbored no small amount of jealousy for the relationship twins shared. While he was not a bright man, Peter was smart enough to know he would never be as close to his wife as he wanted.

The Twins stood before their father, their mother, their husbands. They stood in the house where they had grown up filled with broken people and broken things. Anna thought, “This is the last time we will ever stand in this room,” and Hanna suddenly felt like she could breathe again. She tried to say something but she couldn't find her voice. Her throat was dry and hollow. The Twins looked at their parents and thought about everything they had ever wanted to say to two people so ill-suited for doing right by their children.

“I'm sorry to intrude,” Ilse said, her voice tight, her words clipped. She crossed her legs and fidgeted with a big diamond ring on her left hand. “I wanted to see how you girls and The Boys were doing, perhaps explain myself.”

Anna shook her head. “Explanations aren't necessary,” she said. “Your leaving is a long time gone.”

Hanna removed her wedding ring and dropped it on the coffee table. Peter sneered and said, “Whatever,” and Hanna rolled her eyes.

The Twins stood before their father, their mother, their husbands. They sucked in a great mass of air, threw their shoulders back. They had rehearsed this moment more than once but then they realized that with all the time and wrongs gone by, there was nothing worth saying.

How Hanna, Laura, Anna, Logan and the baby got away

They piled into Laura's truck, their belongings packed tightly into a small trailer hitched to the back. They sat perfectly still, held their breaths, looked straight ahead.

-G
ood afternoon,
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
.

–
Hi, good afternoon. Look, sorry to bother you, but I'm calling because I was reading the newspaper yesterday and I saw your advertisement, and I was wondering what, exactly, you are capable of perfecting. And also why the name's in Spanish.

– All consultations are personal and in person, sir.

–
Yes,
but, just in general, what sort of things do
you improve?

–
We
improve nothing, sir. If we improved things, the
institute would be called the
Instituto de Mejoramiento
. It is not. We are not. It, we, is, are the
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
.

– Okay, but again, sorry, what exactly do you perfect?

– All consultations are personal and in person.

– I see.

– Will there be anything else today, sir?

– I guess, well, sure, why not. Could you give me the address? I read through your advertisement, read it very carefully in fact, but—

– We are located on the
avenida
.

– The... Sorry, the what?

– The
avenida
. The avenue.

– The... Which avenue would that be?

– The
avenida
, sir.

– Madam, is this some kind of joke?

– No, sir, it is not. We do not joke here at the
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
.

– Right, okay, but this is a city, madam. A large, not a small but a large-sized city, with thousands of avenues.

– There is only one
avenida
, sir.

– Well, but—

– We are not hard to find if you are in need of our services. If on the other hand you are not in need of our services, we are quite literally impossible to locate, but then, that wouldn't be such a problem, would it?

– No, I guess not. One last thing—do you, there at the
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
, do you speak, in general, English?

– We are speaking English now, sir, you and I.

– Right, but the others, the, um, doctors or therapists or—

–
Perfeccionadores
. Perfectioners.

– Exactly, the perfectioners, do they speak English as well?

– All consultations are—

– Yes, yes I know. Well. Very well.

X

He went. He left his house and got in his car and drove. He turned left, and turned left again, and turned right, and went straight ahead. He turned left and right and left and left and left, and then he hit the
avenida
. He'd never seen it before, but there it was. He turned right and drove up the avenida until it dead-ended at the bay. There was a white fence or railing along the cliff-top, and a fine view: the bay, the seagulls, the sailboats. For a time he stared at the view. Then he got back in his car and drove down the
avenida
until it dead-ended at a white fence or railing along a cliff-top overlooking the open ocean. There was a view here as well. Again the seagulls and sailboats, though fewer of both than before. After staring at this new yet familiar view for a time, he got back in his car and drove back up the avenida, and just as he was about to turn right into the maze toward home, there on the corner he saw a sign.
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
, it said.

He parked his car and walked to the door, knocked and opened and entered. Inside was a small lobby or vestibule and to one side was a desk and behind the desk was a woman. She had large dark eyes and creamy skin and short dark hair and a pretty smile.

– Yes? she said.

– Good afternoon. You, we, I called earlier and we spoke, you and I, I believe.

– Yes, sir, we did. One hundred dollars, please.

– But—

–
Each session costs one hundred dollars, sir, regardless or irregardless, both are acceptable now, of the treatment received.

– But—

He waited for her to interrupt him, and she did not.

–
But... isn't that a little, I don't know, irregular? I haven't even seen the perfectionists yet. How do I know—

–
Perfeccionadores
, sir. Perfectioners. Not perfectionists, not in any sense of the word. “Perfectionist,” sir, while likewise from “perfection,” from the Middle English
perfeccioun
, from the Old French
perfection
, from the Latin
perfectio
,
perfectus
, was first used in or around 1846 to refer to or as signifier for an adherent to the ethical doctrine which states that the perfection of moral character constitutes man's highest good, or alternately b: an adherent to the theological doctrine that a state of freedom from sin is attainable on earth, or alternately 2: anyone disposed to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable. Perfectioners are something else entirely, and no one ever sees them.

– Oh.

– I believe we will start with your skin.

– My skin? But madam, my skin... Well, okay, but it's not what I had in mind.

– Rest assured, sir, it's all part of the program, the program that has been chosen on your behalf. For now, try not to worry about the other aspects, the aspects that you did in fact have in mind. Those will be attended to in due time, insofar as they yield to our treatment—all of them, each and every one, insofar as they yield to our treatment, but in accordance with the program, and in due time. Now. Cash, check, or credit card?

He paid in cash and was shown by the large-eyed dark-eyed creamy-skinned short-haired dark-haired prettily smiling woman into a square waiting room. He sat down in the only chair, and the woman left, closing the door behind her too quickly for him to catch more than a glimpse of her splendid, better than splendid, quite genuinely ideal rump.

The walls were lined with bookshelves lined with books. After fifteen or twenty minutes of waiting he began to walk around, not in circles but in squares with sharp right angles, inspecting the books. None of them were in English. He wished he had paid more attention to his Spanish teacher in high school, just on general principles, just for the good of the thing, as none of the books were in Spanish either. After fifteen or twenty minutes of walking around in squares he sat down. After fifteen or twenty minutes of sitting he got up again and went to the door of the waiting room. There, he listened. He heard nothing. After five or seven minutes of hearing nothing he opened the door and walked out to the lobby or vestibule. Now there was no one sitting behind the desk. He waited at the desk for nine or eighteen minutes, standing rigidly though not at attention. If there had been a bell or buzzer of any kind, he would have rung or buzzed it. He called out. He shouted. He screamed. At last he rapped his knuckles firmly on the desktop. Then he walked out the door and down the walk and to his parking spot, got into his car, and drove the long drive home.

What a gyp, he thought.

X

First thing the next morning, he stopped sleeping and awoke. He opened his eyes and stretched, closed his eyes and opened them again. He stretched again. He got up and went to the bathroom and turned on the light and removed his underpants and turned on the shower and looked in the mirror.

His skin was perfect.

It was blemishless.

His acne, the acne that had plagued him, a forty-year plague, the very acne that had served as Elizabeth Wannaker's excuse for not accompanying him to the junior prom, and she'd said it out loud and to his face and in the presence of many persons, his friends and hers, though mostly hers as his lurked a short distance away, It's those zits, Stanley, those zits, do something about those zits and then maybe I'll accompany you to a prom, though not the junior prom as it will be too late for that and anyways I'm hoping Harold Plansky will ask me. Do you know him? His friends? His phone number?

That self-same acne was gone.

As were his scars. The thin curvilinear pink line across the top of his left big toe from that time he'd dropped the paint-can, and god alone knows why he'd been painting barefoot, freshening up the trim around the front door like his dad had told him to, and what a weird accident, the can had caught him just right, opened his toe down to the bone, and paint everywhere, blood-colored paint, no way to tell what was injury and what was home improvement and his whole foot hurt like a bitch—that thin curvilinear pink line was gone.

And the purple gouge in his left shin from that time he'd been running through the shopping center and had turned mid-flight to see if the bikers were still chasing him and had smacked into the low stone planter—that purplish gouge, filled in and touched up, the same color as the rest of his shin, shin-colored.

And the slight pucker in his glans from that mucked-up circumcision—vanished.

And the jagged slash down his right cheek from that time his ex-wife had come at him with the bread-knife, not that he blamed her, he'd been heavy on the sauce back then and heavy with his hands—invisible as if undone.

And the horrendous molten rippling of his left cheek and ear and part of his scalp from that time he'd gone into the JC Penney's, the whole place on fire, stacks of outerwear and racks of innerwear blazing torch-like, to save the Billingham kid trapped and cowering in the dressing room, who ended up dying anyway the following year, mowed down in a crosswalk by an unknown motorist who did not stop and was never apprehended—all that horrendous molten rippling now baby-smooth.

And the five mauve nickel-sized welts scattered irregularly across his chest from that time when RT Pickaxe had run into a whole goddamn battalion of NVA maybe ten clicks into Cambodia, unable to hold the LZ and god was it hot, the perimeter brought in tight, calling for air support, calling for extraction, and he heard a voice, the voice of Johnson, and Johnson said the chopper was delayed but air support would be there in zero-six, would lay it down thick and close and give them a chance; three minutes later there was no one to return incoming fire but Stanley and Rahlan Drot, the rest of the team KIA and broken, and Rahlan Drot, the one Montagnard left who'd been with him from the start, Rahlan Drot with a shattered femur, the gooks closing in, and Stanley had taken Rahlan Drot on his back and oh how he'd run, the brush ripping at his face and the air keening sick all around, he'd hit a trail and no choice now, up the trail he ran, three gooks in front of him and reaching but he put them down, and how he ran, he dodged them all, all but one, a short skinny dude with an SKS carbine, and the bullets opened holes across the front of Stanley's shirt, five holes, black-rimmed and loose-fringed, and he'd dropped Rahlan Drot and fallen, and old Rahlan Drot, good old Rahlan Drot had taken Stanley's CAR-15 and waxed that short skinny gook, had picked Stanley up, an unbelievable thing, Rahlan Drot losing blood, the shattered femur, but he carried Stanley to the secondary LZ that Johnson's voice guided them towards, they'd popped smoke, purple and yellow and red, and the chopper had come, had pulled them out, by god an unbelievable thing—those five mauve nickel-sized welts, they had been polished away.

And what had become of Rahlan Drot? Stanley stood staring into the mirror in his bathroom, the light on, the shower running, his underpants balled in the corner. Had Rahlan Drot made it through to the end? They'd kept in touch for a time, but then the letters had stopped. Plenty of reasons why that might have happened, though. Say he made it. Say he is even now an aging man, a smiling happy aging man, the shattered femur healed not by any
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
but by time and the body itself, the marvelous body, and Rahlan Drot with his wife, a tiny woman she must be, tiny and lovely and kind, and the two of them tend small fields of rice, and at times in the evening their children and grandchildren come, walking the long walk up and along the ridge, the grandchildren laughing and playing and at times oddly cruel, but only in childish ways, and Rahlan Drot rests in his thatched and stilted longhouse, chats with his wife and his children, watches his grandchildren play.

Stanley stared into the mirror, stared at his perfect skin, and an old word came to him, an old and funny and appropriate word, a word his mother had often used back when the two of them were still speaking, and he smiled, and stared at himself in the mirror, and said the word:

– Gadzooks! he said, perhaps from “God's hooks,” swearing by the Crucifixion nails, archaic, used as a mild oath.

Or perhaps Rahlan Drot hadn't made it.

X

On Sunday he returned to the institute, and the institute
was closed.

X

On Monday he returned to the institute, and the institute was open, and behind the desk sat the large-eyed dark-eyed creamy-skinned short-haired dark-haired prettily smiling woman.

– Hello, she said.

– Hello, he said.

– Are you pleased? she asked.

– It is a miracle, he answered. Or at the very least miraculous. You even perfected my glans.

– Not me, sir. The
perfeccionadores
.

– Even so. A miracle, or at the very least miraculous.

– We here at the
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
aim to please.

– But I don't understand. How—

– You are not meant to understand, sir. You are meant only to be pleased. And now, I believe, your hair. One hundred dollars, please.

– My hair?

– Your hair.

– But my hair, my hair, I like my hair. My hair is fine. Or if it's not, and okay, let's say it's not, let's say it's graying, gone a bit thin on top, but no big deal, no particularly big deal, nothing I can't handle.

– You're forgetting about the program.

– Look, okay, the program, but if I want to fix my hair I can just go to the hairdresser and get a damn haircut, can't I. And for a damn sight less than a hundred dollars.