“Who cares about normal? What in the hell is normal anyway? Normal is overrated.”
I listen to all the voices, and I hear a certain tone beginning to dominate the cautious, scaredy-cat Kit. The bold, brash Kit is winning. I pat my face dry, stand erect, shoulders squared, and I take in a deep and steadying breath. I reach into my apron pocket for my tube of hot-pink lipstick. I always keep a bright lipstick in my pocket. It’s my armor. I lean forward into my reflection and carefully reapply the bright splash of fun and aggressively feminine color. I smack my lips together. There. I study my work. I approve of the look—sort of cute, playful, but a weaponized femininity. I’m sure my therapist has big thoughts about this. I smooth wisps of hair back from my face, pop a stick of cinnamon gum into my mouth, and begin to chew. Chewing always helps channel my adrenaline, hones my focus.
I check my watch—barely enough time for a quick walk-through before I must start cleaning in earnest. I set the timer on my watch.
Studiously avoiding the brash paintings of “BergBomber” in the living room, I hurry upstairs. There are four spacious bedrooms and an office. The first two bedrooms—queen beds. Appear to be guest rooms, unused. The office—Jon Rittenberg’s. A man cave. Framed black-and-white photos of craggy mountains. Bookshelves with nonfiction works penned by the “survivors” of extreme pursuits. Conquerors of peaks, oceans, and jungles. Plenty of self-help books—how to be better, bigger, stronger, how to make people listen to you. Low-carb and “keto” diet books—“build more muscle,” “maintain a strong physique.” A Peloton with a large monitor and spin shoes hanging on the back. Yoga mat. Weights. It all screams of an aging Olympian going soft around the middle, losing his edge, and worrying about it. This fills me with a sadistic spurt of pleasure. I touch the glass desk with its iMac and a massivecurved monitor. I get the sense Daisy and Jon Rittenberg have not been in this house long. It all feels very newly moved into.
I start to exit the office but stop as one of the mountain photos snags my attention. I recognize the crags. It’s one of the peaks that looms over the village I grew up in. A small, world-class ski community two hours north of the city to which my parents immigrated because the resort municipality offered my father a job. My dad was a sanitation engineer. He worked at the wastewater treatment plant that treated the town’s sewage. A darkness clouds my mind. I start to hear the taunting, singsongy voices of the kids at my school: “Katarina Poop-ovich’s father works at the poo plant. Hey, Turd-ovich, what’s your dog’s name—Stinky?” I hear the roar of mocking laughter. The old pain and anxiety crunch through my chest. Suddenly I feel fat and pimply again. My eyes flood with tears. My mom would hug me when I came home from school crying. She would stroke my hair and tell me I was beautiful, and God I miss her so much.
I hurriedly exit the room and slam the door shut, locking the laughing, jeering rich-bitch kids inside. Those kids whose houses my mother cleaned, whose beds she made, whose clothes she put away.
I move to the main bedroom. It’s done in soft shades of gray. Big windows that allow a beautiful slant of light. There’s a walk-in closet and en suite bathroom. With one eye on my ticking timer, I enter, absorbing the atmosphere of the room. I stare at the king-size bed. Slowly I walk up to a bedside table with a box of tissues and a book.
I pick up the book. It’s the story behind the making of a reality show about rich housewives. This must be Daisy’s side. My gaze goes to Jon’s side. This is where they make love, and babies.
A hardness coalesces in my core.
I imagine my therapist’s voice: “Why, Kit?Whydo you feel these things?Whyare you doing this? Write why, why, why until you fall through the trapdoor into something new.”
I don’t need to ask. I know why.
I’m already through the trapdoor. All I see are dark warrens burrowing farther down into shadows, deeper into crypts filled with fun house mirrors that bounce back my reflection in a thousand kaleidoscopic ways. In one mirror I see fat, sad teenage Katarina Poop-ovich. I’d managed to forget about her for a while. She’s back now quite clearly.
I see the Katarina who got good grades. A noise begins in my head as Katarina drops out of high school and blurs into smoke. Then I see Kit the maid, who has great friends and a contented life, cleaning homes because there’s no pressure to perform and she can be invisible. I see Kit on a stage under bright lights with her amateur theater group, acting countless parts, wearing masks, being characters other than herself and completely at ease with that. I see her on the streets in the summer doing improv, engaging audiences with interactive theater art, blowing balloons for kids... and there are glimpses of other Kits and Kats... I can’t see those properly. They slip from mirror to misshapen mirror, sliding deeper into the tunnel shadows—darting, watching, whispering at the edges of my consciousness.
I shake myself, clearing all the Kit-Kats from my head before entering the bathroom. Quickly, I open and close the cabinets, scanning cosmetics and medicines. I see anxiety meds. Uppers. Downers. There’s quite a bit here for me to come back to. My timer sounds. My pulse quickens. I must start cleaning.
I hasten to the last room, open the door, and freeze.
It’s the baby’s room.
I enter cautiously, run my hand along the edge of the waiting crib. There is a little stuffy bear inside. A strange emotion fills me. Above the crib hangs a musical mobile of pastel circus elephants and unicorns. I turn the music on. The elephants and unicorns begin to twirl to a tinkling lullaby that makes me think of little cottages in dark woods and lost girls in red riding hoods seeking grandmas and finding wolves. While the eerie music plays and the elephants and unicorns dance, I go to the dresser and smooth my palm over the changing table. This room sucks my energy. It suffocates my breathing.
I’ll come back another time.
Dear Diary, if I read this entry to my therapist, I know she’ll ask if I want—or wanted—kids. Maybe I’ll tell her I was pregnant once. And that I can’t have them now. That my uterus was damaged the first time round followed by an infection. Maybe I’ll explain how that happened. I might even tell her it’s why my fledgling marriage crashed before it could even take off. Or... maybe I won’t.
I go downstairs and carefully examine the ultrasound scan once more.
Maybe if I clean this house fast enough today, I’ll have just enough time to run back upstairs and pose for a selfie in front of the dancing elephants and unicorns while holding this scan in front of my tummy.
#surprise #babyontheway #wearesothrilled #meandmyhoney
I’ll post it on my #foxandcrow account. My secret joke. Laughing in the face of all the other false narratives out there.
This gives me a jolt of pure pleasure. I start the vacuum cleaner.
JON
October 17, 2019. Thursday.
Two weeks before the murder.
Jon sits in the booth at the Hunter and Hound, staring at the business card Henry left.
He’s shaken. He feels a climbing rope has been cut, a belay partner has deceived him. He’s falling, falling, the noise in the wind rushing past his ears. He hears the chantJonJon JonJon JonJonas he spirals down.
Has BergBomber lost his edge—
