SUPER EVIL ALIEN
by ANA CARPENTER
At the clinic there are rules. Rules like, finish everything on your plate. Like, don’t take longer than three minutes in the bathroom.
Sometimes three minutes is not enough. Then, a nurse in blue scrubs knocks on the door. This means you’re supposed to call something out, to confirm that you are, in fact, taking a shit or wiping your ass and not standing over the toilet with a finger down your throat.
Eight weeks I spend at the clinic. You’d think I was dying when they brought me in. I wasn’t. I may not have been doing great, but I wasn’t dying. Not like the girls who spend their first few days hooked up to tubes. There was some issue with my lungs. Something about pneumonia. I’m over all that by week three. Then it’s just a matter of behavior. Changing behavior. Fixing behavior.
In the end, of course, they change nothing, fix nothing.
On week nine my sort-of boyfriend, Danny, picks me up. Early September, heat mirages shimmering along the expressway. Ours is a long-distance relationship that started in high school. We’re always on the brink of ending things.
“So,” he says, drumming the steering wheel, “How was it?”
“How do you think?”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“Well,” he says, looking out the window, away from me, “I’m glad you’re coming home.” Then he does look at me, waiting. But I have no response. There is nothing I want to say.
***
The whole time I was at the clinic my mother called twice. The first time was a few days after intake, to make sure I was settled in, read, that I hadn’t made a break for it when they were transferring me from the hospital. The second was week four, to ask if I was better yet but mostly to drop some hints about how much of her insurance my stay had eaten up.
When they gave me a release date I called her. She didn’t say much on the phone. She’d been in contact with my college. They had approved me for a medical leave of absence.
“I just hope,” she said, at the end of the call, “That you’ll find something useful to do while you’re here.”
The phone at the clinic was a crusty black landline with a squiggly rubber cord, the kind of phone I imagine they have in prisons. I had the urge to slam it against the wall. Or maybe into my own skull. This was one of those times when having a friend might have been nice.
Can you believe, I could have said, rolling my eyes hard, what she just said to me?
But there was only one girl nearby, waiting for the phone. Niamh, with wispy red hair and wrists like twigs. And I knew she didn’t like me. A few days earlier I’d made fun of the way she licked ranch dressing off the blades of her plastic fork.
***
My mother’s house is spectacular: three stories, red brick, windows with white shutters. A glistening blue pool out back. The house is surrounded by tall pine trees that drop needles all over the driveway. When Danny and I first started going out I was convinced he was more into the house than into me. I didn’t blame him.
He pulls up slowly to the front door and says, “I’ll call you tomorrow?”
“If you want.”
As I’m stepping out of the car he grabs my arm. I pull away. If we’re not fucking I prefer to leave at least six inches of space between us.
“Pauline?” he says. I swallow, hold eye contact.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to say that I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
I close the door before he can say anything else.
***
Times Danny called the clinic: ten. Times I called him: two. Once early on, to tell him to stop calling so frequently, and again the day before discharge, to ask, reluctantly, if he would pick me up.
The morning I left they gave me a white binder full of instructions. Meal plans and whatnot. Phone numbers for psychiatrists and psychologists and nutritionists. I dropped it in a garbage can in the parking lot as I walked out to Danny’s car.
***
My mother is exactly where I knew she’d be, sitting by the pool in a sleeveless white collared shirt and silky black pants. This is how she always dresses, like she works in finance, even though she’s never had a job.
I watch her flip through a magazine through the sliding glass doors that lead out from the kitchen to the patio. She is the cliché divorced housewife in more ways than one: dyed-blonde hair, stick thin, living off checks my father sends twice a month.
She looks up, sees me. Stands. Slides the door open. We make eye contact: her at the edge of the living room, me in the kitchen, my bag dropped on the floor.
When I see her gearing up to say something I turn around and pour myself a glass of water from the refrigerator.
“So I guess we’re not speaking to each other,” she says.
“We are now.”
“Did Danny drop you off?”
“Yep.”
“And you’ve—” she hesitates, walking closer to the kitchen counter. “You’ve figured some things out?”
She’s referring, obviously, to the clinic, in that dry condescending way that makes me want to gouge my own eyes out with a spoon.
“Yep. Figured everything out, actually.”
I say this in a mean way, between gulps of water.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she snaps. “I don’t deserve it.”
Her face softens. Another common shift. I’d like to think it no longer works on me. “I missed you, you know.” she says, like Danny. Except not quite like Danny. “I missed you a lot.”
Then she crosses over to my side of the kitchen counter and hugs me in her smooth, silky clothes while I stand there all sweaty and corporeal and disgusting.
***
She informs me, over dinner, that she’ll be hosting one of her dinner parties tomorrow night, at our house. My presence, she says, isn’t required. But it would be highly appreciated.
“It’s just,” she adds, “I set this all up before I knew you were coming home.”
I say nothing, scraping a fleshy hunk of whitefish with my fork.
“If you want, I can cancel it.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Because for the record I can. I mean, I’m willing to. Cancel it. I’ll just invite everyone over some other time.”
“Don’t cancel it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Please. Don’t cancel it.”
“Fine. If that’s what you want.”
I pick at the fish until it turns cold, then set my plate next to the sink and watch as my mother scrapes all the food into the trash.
***
Past midnight I am hit with the urge, the one I have wasted so many insurance dollars learning to avoid. There are rituals for this, or so I’ve been told. There are strategies. Drinking water or taking long deep breaths or writing in a journal. Remember: this too shall pass.
But obviously I don’t do any of those things. I don’t even consider doing any of those things, because if I’m going to eat until I feel sick I can at least spare myself the additional humiliation of writing in a journal beforehand.
Here is what I’m thinking as I open the refrigerator: how all the nurses at the clinic are idiots. How no journal and no glass of water will ever stand a chance against that crazed electric thrum in my head. How I’ve already tried it all, the journals and the water and the deep breathing. I’ve even tried things they would never dare suggest, like, taking off all my clothes first or eating in front of a mirror or dousing the food in salt or red pepper flakes or honey dijon mustard.
It doesn’t matter what I eat or what it tastes like. It doesn’t matter if every mouthful burns. I would eat dog food if it really came down to it, if I couldn’t get anything else.
You can imagine what comes afterward. Inside the bathroom with the door closed. Flushing the toilet again and again.
At the clinic, when they forced me to speak, I shared graphic details. I went on and on about what I ate and what it tasted like on the way back up. I liked watching the other girls’ faces pinch in disgust.
“Yes,” the therapist would say, “I understand. But how does that make you feel?”
This was the kind of question I never knew how to answer. How does it feel? It feels like nothing. Like tunneling deeper into the ground. Like slowly scraping my life into a trash can. Flushing it down the toilet, if you will. At this point I just don’t care enough to stop.
***
Danny calls the next morning, just like he said he would. We sit in his dark basement, movie posters on the walls, and watch old episodes of Modern Family. I reach for his leg, move my hand down toward his knee. He shifts, squirms.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. Move on top of him. Lift my shirt. But when he puts his hand on the bare skin of my waist I flinch; I can’t help it.
“I don’t care, you know,” he says.
“About what?”
He hesitates. I stare at him hard, waiting. Light from the TV dances on the wall behind him. I know what he’s going to say and I know I’m not going to like it. But I’m not letting this go.
“About what you look like. Physically, I mean.”
That’s it. Game over. I yank my shirt back down and stand up.
“What?”
“Next time just call me fat.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He has this look on his face like he’s about to get truly, genuinely angry. I’m waiting for it. But then he just sighs.
“Why don’t we just watch TV?” he says, because he is a kind, accommodating person. And because he is such a kind, accommodating person I sit back down and accept his vape when he offers it to me. I take long slow hits that burn my throat. What else am I going to do? Go home?
***
I ask if he’ll come to my mother’s party. Because if I have to wander around the pool while ducking questions from my mother’s awful friends I at least want someone there who’s on my side.
“Do I have to dress up?”
“Not if you want to piss her off.”
“That is the opposite of what I want.”
“Then probably. But I’m wearing jeans. And if she doesn’t like it fuck her.”
But at five pm, an hour before the guests are supposed to arrive, she hovers in the doorway to my room and hits me with, “Is that what you’re wearing?”
She’s wearing a navy-blue dress with elbow-length sleeves and a necklace with a small pendant, a recognizable brand.
“Yes.”
“Hm.”
She walks inside, stepping over piles of sweaty crumpled clothes on the floor. My room is a mess. There is dirty underwear on the bed.
She stands in front of the closet, the door hanging open, and thumbs through all the hangers.
“How about a sweater,” she says, “With a skirt, maybe. Or you can borrow something of mine.”
As if anything of hers would fit me. There’s also the problem of wearing nice clothes at all, clothes that would suggest I gave more than two shits about my appearance. That I put in effort.
“How about this?”
She’s holding the same dress she forced me to wear to my high school graduation, smoothing out the creases with her arm. Hibiscus perfume rolls off her in waves. She smells like air freshener, like a clean bathroom with a sparkling marble floor.
***
When Danny shows up I’m leaning over the kitchen counter pulling threads from the sleeves of the dress my mother picked out.
“You look nice,” he says, which probably means, for once you don’t resemble a college dropout bum.
“Thanks.”
It’s early. Not many people are here. My mother is out by the pool with her best friend, a woman named Violet who has skin stretched tight by botox and wears the ugliest pink sweaters you’ve ever seen.
So far I’ve successfully dodged almost every question about why I’m not at school. I tell Violet’s husband that I just got out of rehab for a heroin addiction, which is pretty funny until he walks away and my mother turns to me angrily and says, under her breath, “Maybe he would have believed you thirty pounds ago.”
I wish I had a tape recorder running. Just so I could play it back later and confirm that yes, she really did say that. Hear the words again and again.
The dress is too tight. Sweat forms in the armpits.
Danny asks if I want to get some air, so we go out by the pool. My mother sees us. She waves at Danny. Gives me a look that says, behave yourself, which obviously makes me want to do the opposite.
I ask Danny for his vape.
“You’ve been back for what, a day?”
“So?”
“So maybe try to avoid conflict?”
But he can never resist me for long. He hands it over. It takes my mother about one minute to look over from her conversation and see me blowing out over the pool. Inhaling and exhaling. I’m thinking, this is it, finally. Finally she’s going to yell.
Instead she finishes her conversation. Sips her drink, something pink mixed together in a cocktail glass. Then she walks over. When she’s close she says, “Put that away.”
“No.”
Her breath is sweet and alcoholic. I stare at her. She stares back. Her eyes are hard plastic blue. I can see the bones in her chest.
“Put it away or leave.”
I hit the vape again. This time I blow the vapor straight into her face, thinking, whatever happens next, I deserve it. She steps back and coughs. I’m waiting for an explosion but her face just goes cold.
“Get out. Now.”
Then Danny has his hand around my wrist and he’s pulling me away, back out through the kitchen, where people are piling salad and smoked salmon onto plates.
It’s not until we’re in the driveway that I pull my arm out of his grasp, rubbing the places on my wrist his fingers touched.
***
We end up in his basement. Just like all those nights in high school when my mother and I fought. TV on, light on the wall. It’s been hours of this. We stopped for food on the way back and there the remnants are, on the coffee table, cold and greasy.
What I want right now: to be alone somewhere in a kitchen chewing things until my mind becomes a long white blur.
Danny turns the TV off.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something,” he says.
“Okay.”
He sighs, pulls the vape back out of his pocket and plays with it.
“We’ve been on and off for a long time, right?”
“Sure.”
“Now that you’re here, I was thinking we could be, like, less on and off.”
“Okay.”
“It’s just–” he takes a hit of his vape, puts it back in his pocket. Looks at me. “It’s just that I missed you. And I’m really glad you’re doing better. And I want us to be together. Like, for real.”
“Okay.”
He reaches for my hand. In the dark his eyes look very white. I let him touch me. After a few seconds I scoot closer to him on the couch. Put my head on his shoulder. He puts his arm around me. The basement is cold but I can feel sweat congealing all over my body. Every time I breathe I hear my lungs creak.
My hand moves between his legs. He goes still on the couch. I keep touching him until he shifts away.
“Not now,” he says.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. No reason. I just don’t want to.”
I start to climb on top of him.
“Pauline,” he says, but I’m not listening.
He tries to push me away gently but I have him pinned. If he wants me to get off of him he’s going to have to push harder. Now I’m pulling at the zipper of his jeans. Now I’m lifting the waistband of his underwear. That’s when he shoves me. I stand up quickly. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t know who I am.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Jesus. I just thought you might be in the mood.”
He’s breathing heavy, zipping his jeans back up.
“Maybe,” he says slowly, “Maybe I should take you home.”
“Sorry if I got some mixed signals. Sorry if I thought you were, you know, still attracted to me. Physically, I mean.”
He says nothing for a while, just stares at me. I stare back. I’m thinking things like, I am indestructible. Like, I am a super evil alien that shoots lasers from its eyes.
“Fuck you,” he says, but he isn’t loud or angry. He says it in this quiet voice that makes me think I’ve finally done it, finally pushed too far. Found that point you can’t come back from.
***
At the hospital, after I denied everything, they showed me X-rays.
This is a healthy pair of lungs. For comparison.
These are your lungs.
“Cool,” I’d said flatly. “What’s the difference?”
But I could see the difference. My lungs were full of fuzzy white strands, like spun cotton. The healthy lungs were clear. Clean. No aspirated chunks of vomit rotting the airways.
Sometimes at the clinic, when I tried to sleep, my chest would go tight. It was probably anxiety or something stupid like that. But in the moment I thought I was dying. I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured all that rot clogging my ribcage.
Forget antibiotics. I wanted someone to cut me open and scoop it out.
The kind of fantasy that can only happen at night: that when I opened my eyes there would be a surgeon standing next to me, masked, wearing tight blue gloves.
We’ve done it, he would say, in this cold, sterile voice. We’ve fixed it. We’ve extracted the source of the problem and now everything bad is gone.
***
I’m ready for her, is what I’m thinking, as I open the front door. The house is quiet and dark. Every trace of the party is gone. The dishwasher gurgles. The countertops are empty.
She’s sitting by the pool holding a glass of wine.
At night, the lights in the pool turn on. The water glows pale blue.
I open the sliding glass door and step outside, inhaling chlorine. I sit down in the chair next to her, braced for impact.
“How was the party?”
“Oh, you know. All right.”
“That’s good.” I hesitate. “And the food was good?”
“Well, I made it. So it’s not like I can complain.”
“Right.”
I’m tired of waiting. I want her to yell.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Are you mad at me?”
She sighs. “I wouldn’t say mad.”
“Disappointed, then?”
“Sad, maybe. Maybe I’m a little sad.”
“Because of me?”
She waits for a moment, like she has to think about it. There are gray eyeliner smudges underneath her bright blue eyes. She says, “Yes.”
She finishes the last of her wine and takes the glass back inside to the kitchen sink. She washes it by hand, dries it with a towel. We make eye contact, briefly, through the sliding glass doors. I know how this night will end for me. So does she.
***
At the clinic, there were people who got mail every week. Niamh, for example. Her older sister would send her all these get well soon cards with bandaged teddy bears on the front.
I thought about those cards a lot. Get well soon. Like she had cancer or something. Like it wasn’t her own fault that her long red hair was falling out in clumps. That her body had turned against her.
Niamh was discharged the day before me. Her sister picked her up. We all stood in the entryway to say goodbye.
As she walked out into the bright sunny parking lot I just had this feeling. Like an intrusive thought. No real reason for it. I thought: she’ll probably be okay. I really did want it to be true.
Ana Carpenter is a writer from Chicago. She recently graduated from Columbia University, where she studied English and creative writing. This is her first published story.
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