Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (19 page)

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Authors: Alissa Nutting

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BOOK: Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

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M
AGICIAN

After my older brother Keith lost his arm in a car accident, I bought him a bird. I thought it might be nice, the company and its bright color. He and I go to the same college and live down the hall from one another in the same apartment complex. We’re very different, though. We did not hang out much before his accident. Keith was an athlete and an alcoholic; I prefer chemistry and yarn.

Most of the girls he and his friends hung around with were beautiful. I’m not beautiful, although he told me once that I was. “Jean,” he said, “you just aren’t beautiful in a way that people notice. It’s comfortable, the way you’re beautiful. Your face always reminds me of home.” I don’t think home was what any of his friends were looking for. They wanted excitement. My face does not remind anyone of that.

When I take the bird into Keith’s apartment, it’s so dark that the bird stops chirping. “It is not nighttime yet,” I tell the bird, but it stays quiet and does not believe me. “I brought you a bird. It will cheer you up and make you feel better,” I tell Keith, but he stays quiet and does not believe me. Keith’s living room is like a reverse sundial; shadows shift to tell that time does not pass.

Whenever I go over to his place since the accident, I can feel my heart breathing and my lungs beating. Things are all messed up. The pulse of my breath makes a thin white cloud in the air. The room is too cold for a bird.

When I turn on the heater, its loud ticks sound like the restoration of life, and I set the bird down by it and put a towel over its cage. “It will be under there, when you’re ready,” I tell him. “Please do not kill it.”

Keith stares at me and I realize he’s looking at my sweater. “I knitted it,” I tell him.

He’s quiet for a second and then he laughs a little. “You should knit me something to go over the end of my arm where my hand used to be.” He smiles at my discomfort. “You should knit me a fake hand.” I want to laugh too, but laughing around Keith is like a foreign word I’ve forgotten the meaning of; I want to use it but worry it might be offensive.

Keith itches the air where his arm used to be, and he and I stare at the space for a long time. Sometimes I get the feeling that everything could be okay if I could make myself touch the new end of his arm. I sit down next to him but he folds his arm into his lap. “I hate birds,” he mutters.

“It’s colorful.” I sound assertive when I say this, but I’m not. “I’ll be able to hear it in my apartment down the hall, so we’ll kind of be sharing it that way.”

“Will you take care of it?” Keith asks.

His arm’s end is a dome of gauze. Touching it would be like patting the stomach of a soft doll. It would be like telling my brother, “This is you. It is different but it is you because I’m holding it right now.”

“For a while,” I say. We sit together until the shadows get darker but time does not pass, and eventually I take him by the upper arm. Its end now rests so close to me that I feel like it is listening to my heartbeat, and after more shadows I whisper, “I’m going to touch it now” and I do. Though it is soft and motionless, the feeling of it makes me want to run. My whole stomach turns. I stare across the room at the towel-covered cage and imagine it is all a trick: the towel will fall off the cage and inside will sit my brother’s hand and forearm. The gauze on Keith’s arm will shift until a tiny bird pokes its way out and flies down the hall, past my apartment, off far away to where all spent illusions return.

Personal Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thank you to Ted Pelton and Ben Marcus—for fighting the good fight, for writing and championing innovative literature, and for helping to protect the spaces where it can flourish.

To all the Editors who selected these works for inclusion, particularly Michael Czyzniejewski, Gavin Grant, Ander Monson, Rick Moody, Danielle Pafunda, Sophia Seidner, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, and John Woods, for your ongoing support and encouragement. Thanks also to Rebecca Maslen for your incredible talent in designing this book.

To my MFA thesis director Kate Bernheimer, under whose guidance this book took shape. There are not enough thanks or words; you are a Giving Tree. If a language were created to describe you, ninety-nine percent of its words would be synonyms for generosity. Thank you for the fabulous sprouting branches.

I am deeply indebted to Joel Brouwer, Dave Hickey, Michael Martone, Joyelle McSweeney, Wendy Rawlings, Josh Russell, Douglas Unger, and Richard Wiley: incredible teachers, incredible writers, incredible people. I also wish to express deep gratitude to Glenn Schaeffer and Jon Cobain for the generous UNLV fellowships which have allowed me to continue my writing.

For my fellow workshoppers Sarah Blackman, C. Bard Cole, Tim Croft, Andrew Farkas, Jonathan Hall, Laura Hendrix, Brian Oliu, Carl Peterson, and David Welch, who edited in and outside of the classroom. I am so grateful for your time, your gifts, and your writing. Thank you especially to my travel soulmate Tara Goedjen, who is always lightning-quick to help me back up on the horse, and to Stacy Gnall, Jeremy Allen Hawkins, and Nick Parker, who gave me a home and a writing family while this manuscript was coming into being.

For Xia, when she is older. Would this book have been possible had I not gotten to dress up and laugh and shriek and paint and search for acorns between the writing? You gave me fresh and wondering eyes. Watching you discover your world was such a gift; it felt like something I should have to steal.

Thank you to Leah Bailly, Mark & Beverly Baumgartner, Jason Coley, Andrew Kiraly, Joshua Kryah, Juan Martinez, Matt Swetnam, Vu Tran, and Amber Withycombe for filling my Vegas life with riches, literary and otherwise. Thank you to Maile Chapman for being an incredible resource in every way, from proofreading to encyclopedic knowledge to kindness.

To the following writers who have been exceptionally motivational both on the page and in person: Steve Almond, Brock Clarke, Rikki Ducornet, Michael Griffith, Yiyun Li, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, Lance Olsen, Danielle Pafunda, Stacey Richter, and Kellie Wells.

For the artists in my life who have had more of an impact on my work than they could know: Montana Atwater, Doug & Elizabeth Sargent Currier, Emily Dwyer, Walter Flowers, Ashley Hudson, Burke Miles, and the resplendent Laura Shill. To Becky Hector, co-creator of the magical worlds that I preferred to reality throughout childhood and beyond. To all My Dear Friends, both human and animal, whose names belong Here. I cherish you.

To my family, both immediate and extended, for working around my weirdness.

And to Shawn, for loving me on to the next adventure.

Alissa Nutting was born in rural Michigan. She received a BA degree from the University of Florida and an MFA degree from the University of Alabama, where she served as Editor for the
Black Warrior Review
. Her writing has appeared in
Tin House, Fence, BOMB
, the fairy tale anthology
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
, as well as many other journals. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she has received Cobain and Schaeffer Fellowships in Fiction. She is fiction editor of the literary journal
Witness
and managing editor of
Fairy Tale Review
.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express deep gratitude to the editors and readers of the following publications where the chapters below first appeared:
Apostrophe Cast
, July 2008: “Teenager”
Denver Quarterly:
Vol. 43.3, 2009: “Magician”
Diagram:
Vol. 10.2, 2010: “She-Man”
Eleven Eleven:
Vol. 9, 2010: “Ant Colony”
La Petite Zine
, Vol. 21, 2008: “Bandleader’s Girlfriend”
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
, Vol. 24, 2009: “Corpse Smoker”
Make: A Chicago Literary Magazine
, Vol. 7, 2008: “Deliverywoman”
Mid-American Review
, Vol. 29.2, 2009: “Model’s Assistant”
No Contest
, October 2009: “Dancing Rat”
The Southeast Review
, Vol. 25.1, 2006: “Zookeeper”
Swink
, Vol. 3, 2007: “Porn Star”
Tin House
Vol. 33, 2007: “Dinner”
Versal
, Vol. 5, 2007: “Alcoholic”
Quarterly West
, Vol. 70, 2010: “Knife Thrower”