Dirty Secret (21 page)

Vanessa's parents were out somewhere, and a babysitter watched us, letting us take a bubble bath together as we sometimes did, running a wide-toothed comb through each other's sudsy hair. Then we watched part of
The Carol Burnett Show
while drinking hot chocolate made with real milk and loaded with marshmallows. Afterward, the babysitter got us into our respective twin beds, leaving Vanessa's bedroom door open a crack. We giggled and talked late into the night, looking up at the high arched ceiling, at the sliver of moon coming in through the window.

We woke to the sound of her parents saying our names. They said them quietly, as if they didn't want to alarm us. They stepped forward and scooped each of us out of bed. “We want to show you girls something. We need you to dress up a little bit.”

I borrowed a pink dress from Vanessa. I had no idea where we were going. It was late, but as we drove over the dark streets, I wasn't afraid.

We pulled up to a house with a wide, circular driveway and got out of the car. An orchestra played on the lawn, under a giant oak tree. Tear-shaped lights hung from the tree's fat branches. Waiters in tuxedoes walked through the crowd carrying trays of filled champagne glasses. The women's hair was up; some had strands of pearls threaded through. They wore sleeveless satin dresses and several of their skirts trailed on the lawn, but they didn't seem to care. It was a scene from Cinderella's ball. I'd never seen anything like it.

“Isn't it beautiful?” Vanessa's mother said. “We wanted you girls to see it.”

Hot anger flared inside my rib cage: They brought me there to show off, to brag that this was the life they led, a life I could never have. Because it was beautiful, yes. And I didn't belong there, among such beauty. I didn't even belong with a friend whose parents went to events like that. Not when I had a mother at home who wore the same ratty knee-length sweater coat year-round; who chased me out of the house gripping a hairbrush, not so she could tame my tangled locks but so she could hit me with it; a mother who was already showing signs of a mental illness that would render her unable to differentiate between trash and treasure.

It would be years and years before I understood that Vanessa's parents hadn't been trying to show off at all. They'd merely wanted their daughter and their daughter's friend to see something they found beautiful, to see what was possible. All I knew then was that I had no right to be there. And all I wanted to do then, as now, was disappear.

WHEN I GET
home, my husband's gone—to the gym, I assume. Abraham Lincoln greets me at the door, running in happy circles, his little tail wagging. I pick him up and walk toward the front room, where the phone is.

This time when I call, my mother answers.

“Oh, honey, I'm so glad you called!”

“I've been calling, Mom, ever since last night. What did the doctor tell you?” I sit down on the edge of the couch, wishing David were here in case the news is bad.

“You're not going to believe it! There was no cancer anywhere in the tissue samples—no cancer anywhere besides that one polyp.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means I don't have to have chemotherapy. I just go home and this is over.”

“Over, over?” I can't quite believe it.

“I think so, yes.” She sounds as surprised as I feel. “I have to be on a special diet for a while and I'm not supposed to lift anything over twenty pounds.”

“That's amazing. So when can you leave the hospital?”

“They want to keep me until tomorrow. Do you think you could call Sandy or your dad and ask them to drive me home? Your dad called me a few minutes ago but I didn't think to ask.”

“Really? No offense, but why would my dad call you?”

“He wanted to tell me that he went into the house and took care of the stove and refrigerator since I've been in here,” she says.

I knew he was planning to do it, but I didn't know exactly when.

“Now what happened at the doctor?” my mom asks, lowering her voice. “Did you get the permethrin?”

“Yes, I did,” I say. “And now David has these things, too.”

“Really?” She laughs, but I can tell it's because she's nervous.

“Yes, really.”

“Listen, they're easy to get rid of. The nurses treated me and now I'm fine.”

“I hope you're right,” I say. “I feel so repulsive. And I teach a writing class here in our apartment, but I can't have anyone over until I know these things are gone. I mean if they lived on that pillow, maybe they're in our couch, or in the rug, or—”

“Jessie, I'm so sorry about all this,” my mom says. She pauses for a few seconds. “If it makes you feel any better, you'll never have to clean my house again. It looks so fantastic with everything you did to it, and I bet your dad made the kitchen just gorgeous. I promise you, I'm going to keep it that way.”

I know why she thinks keeping her house clean would wipe this parasite-infestation slate clean: She realizes the depth of my obsession with her house. Over the years I've sworn off asking about it so many times—but because my compulsion to try to fix the situation is probably equal in strength to her compulsion to hoard, I always eventually cave. “So, how's your house?” I'll ask, while telling myself,
Shut up shut up shut up,
and when I hear that she has “the most beautiful bureau” from a yard sale waiting on her porch, she just needs to find someone to bring it inside for her, or that she's just spent the last four hours at Walmart buying three different kinds of pizza stones so she can do a taste test—now she just needs a bigger kitchen table to fit all the pizzas—I'll begin the begging/bribing/bullying:
Please just try to bring one box of stuff a week to the Goodwill; if you get it clean enough you can rent out one of the bedrooms to a university student and not have to work; don't you realize your house could be condemned?

But she just laughs off my various attempts and nothing changes. Nothing will ever change. I should know that by now. So why don't I?

WE DO THE
permethrin cream, but three days later not only are David and I still itching, we're still getting new bites. I can't touch anyone—when I meet a friend for dinner at my favorite Ethiopian place I make sure not to have any skin-to-skin contact at all. I don't even let any of my clothes brush against hers. I'm terrified of passing this on and I'd rather die than admit to anyone besides my dad and Sandy that I have it. I tell my writing class that David and I suspect we were exposed to bedbugs and that I want to have our place fumigated before anyone comes over—we begin meeting at a nearby bar instead. My husband
and I eat cloves of raw garlic three or four times a day and take drops of grapefruit seed extract (which supposedly kills parasites) as well as capsules of neem leaves, apparently a cure-all in India. I take baths laced with tea tree oil and scrub every surface of the apartment, sweep, mop, and vacuum constantly.

A week after the first permethrin treatment, we do the second one. It doesn't help. David and I are both so itchy and continuing to get more and more bites. But perhaps the worst part is the amount of time we're losing. Hours that could be spent writing, looking for freelance work, studying Italian, not to mention all the research David needs to do: All those hours are lost to what we are now calling “the bugs.” Because we can wear things only once—and that includes the sheets, blankets, and towels we use—we have to do laundry every day. Thankfully our neighborhood Laundromat is large, with lots of employees, so no one seems to notice our daily pilgrimage with two stuffed laundry bags. That, or anyone who
does
notice isn't saying anything. I start going to the sauna at the gym almost every day, picturing these parasites cooking to death under my skin. I stay in the sauna for thirty, forty minutes, once almost an hour. Afterward I slather myself with tea tree oil and pray that no one in the locker room notices its pungent aroma or the red welts around my ankles and up my calves or the chicken pox–like rash across my waist and hips.

My mother is back home, claiming to feel great, and enjoying the kitchen my dad fixed up for her—he didn't just replace the stove and refrigerator, but also swapped out a gigantic shelving unit for a new one that fits perfectly between the wall and refrigerator, holding more things but taking up less space. She tells me over and over again how
marvelous
it is, and about all the things she's going to cook once she can eat regular food again.

She sounds toned down, though, her voice and inflection weak and muted, and I know it's not just because she feels awful about the bugs—which she does. It's because she had to go off her antidepressants before the surgery. Hers can cause constipation, which is not what she needs with a colon that's still healing. At first I didn't detect a difference in her personality, but now that she's been off them for a few weeks, I can. And I don't like it. She sounds sad, even when she's telling me how much she loves the new kitchen and how grateful she is to my dad and Sandy for helping her. Her words are slow and thick.

I ask when she can go back on her medication.

“Not for a few more weeks,” she says. “But I'm okay.”

“You don't sound okay. Can you call your doctor and see about starting again? At least at a lower dose for the meantime? You really sound terrible.”

“I'm okay.”

“Maybe you could take a drink of water? Your mouth sounds really dry.”

Is she so un-self-aware that she doesn't even know when she's thirsty? Or is it the depression? I have no idea, but I do know that I feel very sorry for her right now—and that's the only reason I don't tell her how truly upset I am about the bugs, about how much they're disrupting my life.

“Hold on,” she says and sets down the phone. She comes back, gulping something. “I'm doing this experiment where I mix juice with water, to make the water tolerable. It's not bad.”

She perks up a little and I let her go on and on, talking about something she saw on the news, about something her career counselor Marcy said, about their latest ploy for the lawsuit. I let her talk even though it makes me feel vaguely abused—no, “used” is the right word. But I don't ask her to stop. She has no one else.

My normally extremely patient husband's patience is beginning to wear thin, though: He snaps at me one day as he comes home from the Laundromat. He fears these bugs won't be gone before we leave for Italy.

“They will be. I promise,” I say, though I'm not so sure myself.

AFTER I'VE BEEN
back in New York for about three weeks, my dad tells me that he's noticed this strange itching around his ankle, and some bumps there that look like mosquito bites but he can tell aren't. He's afraid that he's got the dreaded S-word, too.

“Are you sure it's not something else?” I ask. “Is there anything else it could be?”

“They're just like the ones you described and they itch like hell,” he says. “Dammit! I must've gotten infected when I was dealing with your mother's stove and refrigerator. I scrubbed the floor right before we put the new ones in. I was even on my hands and knees.”

“Can you go to a doctor and get some permethrin? Do you have a regular doctor?”

“I don't have a regular one, but I can go to that clinic on Franklin Avenue I suppose,” he says, sighing. “But I thought you guys haven't had any luck with that medicine?”

“That's true.” I've already told him about how at first it'll seem like it's worked, but after a few days one of us will get new bites. “According to some things I've read, though, the itching can last for up to a year after they're gone, so maybe the bugs are gone and we just can't tell the difference. But I don't think so. I have an appointment with a dermatologist next week.”

“Oh, great. If the medicine doesn't work, why should I even bother getting it?”

“Because maybe it will work for you, or maybe the doctor
you see will know of something else to use. Please go to the doctor tomorrow. And get some medicine for Sandy, too.”

“She won't take it,” he says. “You know she won't.”

I do know. Sandy's approach to health is strictly alternative. Coming from her, the term “Western medicine” has almost as much contempt as the phrase “pinko commie” had during the McCarthy era. That's why neither my dad nor Sandy has a regular doctor. That's why they have only catastrophic health insurance.

“There are some natural cures I'm sure Sandy would agree to take,” I say, “like tea tree oil and garlic . . . though I haven't had any luck with them so far. Obviously. But it's worth a try.”

I lift my pants cuff to look at my chewed-up ankle. My forearms and wrists have red bites all over them, too. It's early May and getting warmer out, and I can't wear skirts or even short-sleeved shirts.

“What's really sad about this,” my dad says, “is that for once, we were all coming together. Sandy and I wanted to help your mother get through this cancer . . . and she ruined it by infesting us with some goddamn parasite—”

“I know Dad, I know. Believe me. But it's not worth raising your blood pressure over. Yes, having this sucks—really, really, sucks—but they're not permanent. There's a cure, we just haven't found it yet. Just, whatever you do, make sure Sandy doesn't get them.”

THAT NIGHT WHEN
my mom calls, I tell her about my dad having the bugs now, too. I say he must've gotten them from being inside her house.

“That's not possible,” she says. “Besides, when he was in my house I'd already been in the hospital for three days . . .” she
drifts off and I hear her mumbling. “
No, four
days, so that can't be how he got them. He must have gotten them from you.”