Dead Ringers
BY KAYA DIERKS
I am stuck at the St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research because mom has Breast Cancer with a capital B.
I don’t do much when I’m waiting in a hospital center. There’s only a lot to do if you are the actual patient. The actual patient is mom, on account of the golfball tumor in her left boob. I just sit in the waiting room, with the People Magazines and the crying boyfriend who keeps calling his mom and saying I can’t believe Jenny has CANCER. The hospital’s nicest nurse Amy, mistaking my boredom for deep despair, comes over and gives me a tropical punch CapriSun.
People are always giving me tropical punch CapriSun like I’m a little kid.
//
I live in Northern Illinois where there is real winter and the parking lots freeze over, so the tires of Maria’s Honda Civic skid out when she pulls us into the Chick-Fil-A. Maria Gonzales is quiet and timid and kind of boring, like, the kind of person who is too scared to text in a group chat. Just loves other people’s messages. She always lets me pick where we go to dinner. I want chicken.
Now Maria Gonzales is convinced that I am deeply traumatized about mom’s Breast Cancer with a Capital B.
We drive her dad’s white Honda Civic. Maria grips the wheel hard. Her nails are painted pale pink, done herself and not at the salon. I can tell because there is a little paint outside the nail.
“How did you feel about the, uh,” Maria says softly.
“The weather’s so ass,” I say.
“You went to the hospital today, right?” she says.
“Yeah, the weather was ass,” I say. “It was, like, seven degrees outside.”
We are in the drive-thru of the Chick-Fil-A because I don’t want to put on my puffer jacket and walk outside. It’s snowing. Snow is crusted on the corner of the Honda Civic windows, making them look dirty.
Maria is still in her Sacred Heart uniform. Like, the pleated skirt and navy blazer. Her brown hair is mostly split ends. I just want chicken tenders. I don’t know why she is my best friend. At least I know how to get her to stop staring at me with big sad brown eyes like I’m about to have a nervous breakdown and start sobbing in the shotgun seat of her dad’s Honda Civic.
“Do you think you’ll see John this weekend?” I say.
Maria keeps staring at me.
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Well, what do you think,” I say.
“I think – I don’t know,” she says, softer.
“Has he texted you yet this week?” I say, even though I know he hasn’t.
John Allen is this German-looking guy who goes to Sacred Heart’s brother school, Cathedral. Maria Gonzales is totally in love with John Allen. Every third weekend, they go back from the party together and fuck on his divorced dad’s couch. I know John Allen makes Maria miserable. I shouldn’t have brought him up. I look at Maria with both eyes, hard. Sometimes, I feel this hot energy in my stomach like I want to be really cruel to her, like I want to cut her open and watch all her strawberry Jell-O guts tumble out.
//
When I get home, the light is on in the living room. There, Dad is sitting on the couch, pretending to watch television. Onscreen, a football game. His phone is balanced on his knee, face-up. He was waiting for me.
“Katie, it’s nine thirty, ” Dad says, like he’s surprised, even though I know he was stalking my location. He turns his phone face down.
“Hi,” I say. I stomp my right shoe, which has snow, onto the mat. “It’s nine thirty.”
“And?”
“Well, you missed dinner,” Dad says. His chest deflates like he’s going to sigh. “Which was at seven.”
Dad had texted me at 6:47pm: Making Dino Nuggets for dinner at 7:00! With one smiley face. Then he texted me, again, at 7:19pm: They’re getting cold. With a frown. And a picture of the nuggets on a white plate.
“Well, I better get going to bed,” Dad says. He stands up from the couch, slow, like his knees hurt. “These sheep aren’t going to count themselves.”
His joke doesn’t make any sense. I stand in the living room and wait for him to leave.
//
Here’s what everyone gets wrong: The real danger with winter in suburban Illinois isn’t the cold. The real danger is that one warm day. The sun melts the snow, making puddles of water. Then the cold comes back. The water freezes, becomes ice. And the mailman slips on his ass. Subarus slide into highway dividers. Etcetera. It’s not the cold, but the inconsistency, that makes the ice.
Inconsistency is also the danger with John Allen.
By Thursday, John Allen had resurrected himself into Maria Gonzales’s Snapchat. She waited two hours to snap him back. When she did, he snapped her back immediately. Then sent a chat. Hey. She said, Hi. He said, Yo my boy Trevors throwing on Friday. Then, It wold be chill to catch you. Then, would.
Maria Gonzales tells all of this to me in Homeroom. We sit in desks next to each other at the back of the classroom by the anti-suicide poster. Maria leans all the way over my desk, her calf pressing into the metal of her desk chair.
“Check it out,” Maria says. She holds her phone out, moving her thumb over John Allen’s profile to half-swipe the chat.
“There it is,” I say.
“Like, he initiated, so I think it would be kind of rude not to go,” Maria Gonzales says. Her eyes are glued to the phone screen. She has the generation of iPhone from four years ago. Her screen protector is all bubbled.
“I guess that’s true,” I say.
“And I don’t think it’s, like,” she says. Her voice drops. “A booty call, or anything.”
“Because?” I say.
“Because he texted on a Wednesday,” she says, fast. She bites her thumbnail, hard. Her eyes still glued on the phone. Then she looks up at me from her position craned between our desks. Her eyes are two brown pools. “I dunno. What do you think?”
Obviously, we go to John Allen’s friend Trevor’s Friday party. That night, I put on my new top from Urban Outfitters, which I bought using the “sorry your life sucks” petty fifty bucks cash my grandparents sent in a “Condolences” greeting card. The top is silver and clings to my boobs. When I walk downstairs, Dad can’t say No, too booby because sorry, my life sucks too much, and also because Dad isn’t my mom.
Then we are in the pulsing house. In the kitchen, next to a framed picture of Trevor’s fifth-grade travel soccer team, I do a shot of Malibu. The Malibu burns down sweet. Another shot comes into my hand, so I do it, too. Maria Gonzales says, “You should slow down, Katie.”
Then, across the sea of swarming bodies, John Allen materializes in a white The Strokes t-shirt.
“Do you think I should go over there, or wait until he sees me?” Maria Gonzales says. She looks up at me with big brown eyes.
I feel the Malibu shoot through me.
“I think I’ll go talk to him,” I say. “What?” she says.
“I think I’m going to go introduce myself,” I say.
It’s already too late. Maria Gonzales stays in the kitchen while I march into the living room. I am immortal. When I’m wearing my silver Urban Outfitters top that shows my boobs, I feel like I can do anything, or save anyone, even save myself. Then, suddenly, I’m in front of John Allen.
“Hi,” I say.
He looks up from his phone, the new one with the better camera. “Uh, hi?” he says.
“I’m Maria Gonzales’s friend,” I say.
“Right,” he says, slowly. There’s a gap between his front teeth.
“I thought it was time to come over and introduce myself, considering that you guys have been talking for, like, forever,” I say. “I’m Katie.”
I put out my hand like we are doing a business transaction. Around us, the party throbs, alive and warm as a heart. John Allen crosses his arms.
“I feel like I know who you are,” he says.
“Okay, stalker?” I say.
“You go to Sacred Heart, right?” John Allen says. He leans back on the couch. “I feel like I’ve seen you around.”
Then, slowly, he grins.
Guys always remember seeing me around. It’s because I’m beautiful.
I like being looked at like I’m beautiful. I’m so tired of people looking at me like they’re scared I’m about to buy a gun, put it to my head, and blow my brains out into the bathroom wall. Why can’t people get it? I want to be the gun instead. Pretty and slim, cold metal, my body tight and wired to explode.
//
At the end of the night, Maria Gonzales guides me into her borrowed Honda Civic, and I spill into the seat like a euphoric sea creature. I feel incredible. But Maria Gonzales is quiet.
“Hey, um. How come you were talking to John Allen?” Maria Gonzales says quietly. In the driver’s seat, she is hunched forward over the wheel like she’s scared I’m going to hurt her.
I flip down the sun visor and slide open the little mirror. I want to see what of my makeup has survived the night.
“Because I wanted to actually meet him,” I say. I slide a nail beneath my lip to fix the gloss.
“But – like –” Maria Gonzales says. She opens her mouth, then closes it. “I – I could’ve, like, I could’ve introduced you guys.”
“I mean, it’s not deep,” I say. I snap the sun visor up. “Like, I just felt like introducing myself tonight. So I did.”
Maria Gonzales looks up at me. In the dark car, her eyes are two black pools. My heart opens and goes thump, thump, thump. Loud. Somewhere deep in my chest like I’m being chased.
I’m more beautiful than her. We both know it.
Maria Gonzales looks down at her hands and starts the engine.
I go on my phone and slide up on my notifications. Text from Dad. Mom and I missed you at movie night. I swipe it away. Beneath it, something new: Complete with a yellow Snapchat ghost, John Allen added you as a friend.
//
The St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research is an hour from my house. It’s deep in real Chicago. On Monday, when I’m forced to be in the waiting room, I get sick of it at 4:32pm, even though there are another two hours left in my visitation shift. I ask Dad to pick me up. He says nothing. But forty minutes later, the SUV is rolling into the parking lot.
“The nurses are saying that you’re avoiding Mom,” Dad says as we drive. Outside the car, it’s snowing. Snow presses into the windshield. The wipers throw it off. “That you just sit there in the waiting room.”
Dad reaches down and taps his Camel cigarette into the cup holder, like he hadn’t made a big deal about quitting two years ago.
“Maybe I like the waiting room,” I say.
Dad doesn’t say anything, and I think that’s the end of the inquisition. We move from Chicago onto the highway home. The buildings are getting further apart. Snow is a blanket over the concrete.
“You know, your mom is sick, Katie,” Dad says suddenly. I look over, but his eyes are on the road.
“Oh, really,” I say. “We’re not just going to St. Mary’s for fun?”
“They didn’t catch it early,” Dad says.
He just exhales a line of smoke. One hand reaches out to grab the cigarette, balanced between his top and bottom lip.
“In fact, you could say they caught it late,” Dad says. I say nothing.
“St. Mary’s is a research hospital,” Dad says. Even. “That means they don’t know if they can cure her. It’s more like a last shot.”
“I read the pamphlet,” I say. I just want to shut him up and turn on the radio. I want to watch Instagram Reels. Girls shimmying in bikinis I can buy.
“It’s your life, Katie,” Dad says. “So I can’t tell you what to do.” He pauses. “I just – I just think that if I – if I were you right now, I would be trying to spend every last second I could with my mom.”
Dad’s eyes are glossy, like he could cry. Please don’t cry, I think. I feel like our conversation is happening to someone else. Like I am actually a girl outside, on the highway, standing in the snow.
Dad brings the cigarette up to his lips again.
“I thought that you didn’t want to smoke those things because they give you cancer,” I say, fast.
Dad doesn’t turn. Or say anything else. The snow falls outside and answers me back.
//
That night, I go into my room and do my makeup: Black eyeliner. Curled lashes. Lip gloss, plumping, from Sephora. I put on a black tank that shows my boobs. Then I put on baggy jeans so I don’t look like a total slut.
I grab my phone, open Snapchat, and take a photo. Send.
John Allen replies in two minutes. A photo of his gap-tooth smile.
Forty-six minutes later, we are at the parking lot of the Post Road Cinemark Theater, which is the premier Cathedral hookup spot. John Allen cuts the lights so the only light in the car comes from our phones.
He looks at me the way boys look when they want to kiss you. He licks his lips. It’s half- alluring, half-revolting.
“You know, I remembered why I recognized you,” John Allen says.
“You did,” I say.
“You’re like, famous,” he says.
My phone starts vibrating. Incoming call from Dad. I flip it face-down against the seat and let it vibrate into my thigh.
“Famous?” I say. I feel my eyes roll.
“Yeah, everyone’s like, Katie the Ice Queen,” John Allen says. “Like, if you say ice queen, everyone knows that’s you.”
“Rizz,” I say flatly.
“Half the dudes at Cathedral would sell their right nut sack just to get with you,” John Allen says. “Probably more than half.”
He’s reclining in the seat that he lowered so that I can easily crawl on top of him.
“And you don’t give a fuck about any of them,” John Allen says. He throws back his head and laughs.
I swallow. “Yeah, I don’t give a fuck,” I say.
“Yeah, and you don’t give a fuck,” John Allen says. I can tell he can’t believe it.
I feel like I am standing outside the car again. I imagine standing in the snowy Cinemark parking lot and the wind pulling through me. Straight through, like thread through felt. Except I am inside. John Allen grabs my wrist. The windows are starting to steam. My phone is vibrating on my thigh.
“Have you ever, you know,” he says and pauses.
“No,” I whisper.
“Are you ok—” he says.
“Yeah, just show me what to do,” I say, fast.
I feel certainty slam into my teeth like a punch. My phone is still vibrating, like I’m getting a billion texts, so I pick it up. Dad is still calling me. I power my phone off. Then I look down at John Allen, who is peeling off his shirt.
I am trying to imagine my body as a gun. Bullets lining the inside of my ribcage.
//
Afterwards, I turn on my phone. I see a wall of new messages: Katie pick up the phone and NOW and URGENT RIGHT NOW and KATIE PICK UP THE PHONE, and then a gap, and then a Come home right now. I don’t read them. Just put my phone down and shut it off. My heart is going thump, thump, thump. I am alive.
“Where now?” John Allen says. I look down at him. He’s blissed out, happy from sex.
He’s shirtless.
“Take me to Maria Gonzales’s house,” I say. My bra isn’t on.
“You want me to take you to Maria’s?” John Allen says. He says nothing for long enough that it gets weird. He’s looking at me like I’ve truly lost my mind. Like I’m a real Ice Queen.
//
And then I’m at Maria’s house. Her house is neat like a frosted Safeway cake. My heart is pounding in my chest like a little bird.
Maria opens the door on the fourth knock. She’s wearing Christmas pajama pants and fuzzy socks.
For a minute, neither of us says anything. I really am more beautiful than Maria Gonzales. I can tell even more when we’re close like this and she has no makeup on. She has a pimple on her bottom lip.
“I fucked John Allen in his car,” I say suddenly. It dislodges from my throat.
Maria Gonzales is totally silent.
“Yeah, we went to the Cinemark theater parking lot like you said,” I say. “In the BMW. Right? Isn’t that how you always said he does it?”
She doesn’t say anything.
I feel something bubble up in my throat, so I let it out as a laugh.
“Aren’t you upset?” I say.
She’s standing inside the house in her pajamas. She has on a Snoopy t-shirt. I’m still standing outside.
“Aren’t you – aren’t you upset?” I say.
I can’t stop laughing. It almost hurts. I feel my mouth flashing open and closed like I’m a wild animal. I wonder if I look pretty laughing on the dark porch in the snow. If it makes my hair look blonder.
Maria Gonzales says nothing. Her eyes start to get glossy, like I’ve betrayed her. But her crying is the last thing that I want.
“Maria, Maria, oh my God, you have to say something,” I say.
Her eyes are totally glossy.
“Aren’t you pissed at me?” I say. I laugh, again, and then I stop laughing. I stop laughing. “He – it kind of hurt. Like, blood got everywhere a little bit. I think he broke my hymen.” I feel my chest rise and fall, fast, but I’m not laughing anymore. “Aren’t you pissed? Aren’t you pissed off?”
Maria Gonzales says nothing.
“Don’t you want to hit me?” I say.
I feel my chest rising and falling like I’m on a run.
“Hit me,” I say, loud.
Then I feel my entire body still. I look at Maria Gonzales, really look at her. Her pink nails have chipped even more. Her brown hair is pulled into two bad braids. She’s put on lip gloss. It smells like cherry. I can tell that she’s just going to cry. The only thing I’ve done is broken her.
She isn’t going to fight me.
//
I’ll fight this, is what Mom had said, her first day at St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research. I’ll fight it. Give it two weeks. Only in two weeks she had started watching Bachelor reruns, which she once called a Top Ten Waste of Time in America.
I wondered if she was going to try couponing next.
The next week Mom let them take her hair. They said, We’ll just cut a little bit so it’s even. She bent her neck down and let them sheer her, clipping all the blonde off. Then she looked like a man.
That night, after I see Maria Gonzales, I go home and meet Dad, who was called by the hospital who told him that Mom is having a Bad Night with a capital B, doctor speech for get your asses to the hospital. We wrap ourselves in scarves and get in the SUV. Dad drives down to Chicago. I watch the buildings grow and squeeze together, the land mutating.
“She just had a bad night,” Dad says.
“I think she should be up by the time we’re there,” Dad says.
“The doctors said she should be waking up,” Dad says.
“I’m glad you’re coming with me,” Dad says. “Having us there will remind her to – to keep, you know, keep fighting.”
She isn’t going to fight.
Mom doesn’t wake up that night. Dad and I stand in her hospital room and watch her vitals beep across the monitors. Her eyes are closed. I see their blue veins. She is in a blue hospital gown. That night, I think about the differences between identical things. Dead ringers: one thing that looks exactly like another. Two twins. Going outside to cry and going out in the rain. My mother’s body and the body of a corpse. I don’t even see her chest move. Like she isn’t breathing. Sometimes, I think that things are what they are. They just are what they are. And that’s it.
