Shine of the Ever Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Claire Rudy Foster

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-87-0 (trade)

  ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-88-7 (ebook)

  Published by Interlude Press

  http://interludepress.com

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

  All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Book and Cover Design by CB Messer

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Interlude Press, New York

  This one’s for The Dude and Lewis Jones.

  Some readers may find some of the scenes in this book difficult to read. We have compiled a list of content warnings, which can be found at www.interludepress.com/content-warnings

  Contents

  The Pixies

  Stay Cool

  Domestic Shorthair

  Littermates

  Venus Conjunct Saturn

  Redhead

  The Voice of Edith

  How to Be a Better Metamour

  Cat Sitting

  Field Medicine

  Pas de Deux

  Shine of the Ever

  The World-Famous Chicken Trick

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Pixies

  Our parents all think we’re weirdos. We’re not good enough for them but we’re good enough for each other. The music is too loud, and we are packed tighter than canned tuna, shoulder against shoulder. Heads moving more or less in rhythm, as if in agreement: Yes, we are the fuck-ups. Yes, we’ll disappoint you. We did it wrong. We win at making better mistakes.

  Some of us look like punks and some don’t but we’re all wearing the costume of belonging. We’re not welcome in your church, you know. This club is our church and it’s loud, loud, loud. The voice of God is in the bass reverb and the lyrics’ rising incantation. You told us that we were as good as dead. You said we have that gay disease. You copy and steal from us; you never give credit. You’re desperate to catch whatever we’ve got.

  We congregate to forget how sick you make us.

  We don’t distinguish between wrong and right; we are what is real.

  The singer has a voice like fighting tigers. She raises her microphone over the crowd of ecstatic faces, and we shout back to her. The sound pushes on the walls, ceiling, floor, growling into something massive and golden.

  When we’re together, we forget that we are hopeless.

  We are something else and we are part of each other.

  We will never fit. Why would we want to be like you? Go to school, get some debt and a silly job? We might even get married, now that it’s legal. But what’s the point of acting straight? We’re no good at it anyway; you tell us all the time.

  We will do things our way. We will stomp to the office in work boots and wear safety pins in our ears. We will leave the glitter in our eyebrows after Pride. We will grow old gracelessly and live in sin and teach our children to argue with anyone, even us, even God. Even I’ll adore you, we sing, even as our hearts ball up in our throats.

  If Darwin was right, we are better than you. My Velouria. The chorus comes and we are a mass of bliss and fury and love and pain and truth and sound.

  Finally through the roof.

  We are going to shake you loose.

  Stay Cool

  Men invented religion as a means of getting their way. To Jessie, that was the only possible explanation for why she was moving out of Seth’s house. She was on her own again.

  She pulled Seth’s truck into the parking lot of her new apartment complex, the last building with vacancies in a low-rent neighborhood in Portland, and began unloading and carrying boxes. Her crappy, two-bedroom shoebox of an apartment still had dings in its walls from the last tenant, a smoker with cats who stank up the carpets and closets. Jessie shifted the crate of inhalers, steam vaporizer parts, and nebulizer that she’d need to plug in before Neil stayed the night.

  Neil had asthma that cleared while they were living with Seth. Now, it would probably come back. Seth’s backyard was a field of lavender and soft lamb’s ear and purple butterfly bush that attracted pollinators during the day and bats at night.

  As Jessie went back down to get more boxes out of Seth’s truck, she passed a mother in a burka with three children in tow. The mother went quiet as Jessie passed them on the stairs, then started up again once she’d reached the next landing.

  Mothers said the same things in every language; theirs was a different kind of faith.

  Jessie’s boxes were dented and had been taped up many times. The heaviest one was books, the last things Jessie kept from her brief marriage to Neil’s father. Four Bibles in various translations, a Quran, the poems of Khalil Gibran, an annotated Wasteland with Pound’s handwriting in the margins.

  Seth’s text said, “Leave the keys on the seat when you park at my place.”

  She couldn’t work out a response to that. The words fit together too tightly for her to get through. He’d lent her the truck and a thousand dollars for the apartment deposit: one boundary mortared on top of another. He’d made it so it was impossible to go back.

  The prophet Muhammad said that marriage is a basis for blessings and children are an abundance of mercy. Every Muslim family in the apartment complex had at least two, one in a stroller and one tagging along when they walked to the nearby mosque.

  The injunction to have more children was a hadith, said to come from Muhammad himself.

  Neil’s father found an abundance of commonalities between the sects. Of course, Jessie thought. He was fluent in God, and all religions were invented by men. They were the language of men—a way to explain to them why their wives did awful things, why their children got sick and died, why they weren’t half the men their neighbors were—a language that ensured men could find acceptance somewhere, since they were incapable of accepting themselves.

  Jessie went back to the truck. There were only a few things left, so she overloaded herself trying to make one less trip up the stairs. Her legs were already burning. She’d gotten weak again. When she was with Seth in the beginning, they ran together in the morning and did push-ups after in the cool grass of the park near his house. She could walk home beside him feeling fresh as a bride and new, with the sun coming up and her sweat turning chill as it soaked into her shirt. She always went into Seth’s house the back way, up the driveway, so she could peek at Neil. It was a gift to find him sleeping peacefully in the back bedroom with the windows open so the lavender breeze could come in and touch his skin. Under the window, Seth installed a small, bubbling fountain, which made Neil’s favorite noise. After years of sleeping with a CPAP machine strapped to his face, looking like a tiny Darth Vader, he was temporarily unhooked and breathing independently. The fountain masked the sound of Jessie’s sneakers on the gravel path and the secret words she said to Seth when only God was listening.

  And now she got winded just climbing the stairs. Jessie dodged a group of shrieking kids brandishing Nerf guns. Her arms were full of her son’s toys and, unable to see over her load of brightly colored plush and plastic, she almost stepped on one boy who got too close. He racked his toy M-16 and darted back, a child soldier. Do not compare this with the evening news.

  She walked up the three flights of stairs and deposited the bag of toys, then sat on the thin brown rug. The toys spilled out of the bag and tugged it sideways, down, down
to the carpet, where its contents tumbled out. A stuffed lion stared at her with glassy yellow eyes.

  She picked it up. Her son might be here Thursday, if the hospital released him from this last stay in the oxygen tent. She had a day to make the apartment nice and put his bedroom together. And figure out a story about why Seth wasn’t around anymore, just like his father, and why they were better off this way: always, better off alone.

  Jessie fell asleep just after sunset. She meant to do more, but inflating two air mattresses without a special pump was too much for one day. She was tired, so she gave up and spread a clean sheet on the floor and lay down on it, clothes on, because she couldn’t remember where she’d packed the blankets. It was too hot to do anything anyway.

  She could hear the clatter of children playing outside, and it leaked into her dreams, and she dreamed that she was herself but had no son, she’d never had a son, never been pregnant. She woke up unsure where she was, blinking in the dim half-light from the parking lot, her clothes musty and too close to her skin. Usually, she would turn to Seth and say, I had one of those dreams again, but Seth wasn’t there to say it to. Jessie turned over and hugged the toy lion to her chest.

  Outside, she heard a toddler shriek. What time was it? Too late for children to be awake, certainly. A car door closed. She fell back into the gray space behind her eyes, and the next time she woke up, it was daytime, and she was sure she knew where she was and that the short, good period she’d shared with Seth was completely, fully over.

  Before she left the truck in the driveway, the way Seth told her to, she twisted the keys around in her hand for a long time, fingering the square, thick key that said Do Not Duplicate on its bow. The lights were off in Seth’s house, but that didn’t mean he was at the job site. With these keys, Jessie could have let herself in one more time, stood in the kitchen, and looked out the window of the house she and her son had lived in before things fell apart all over again.

  * * *

  Neil was born like this, with a fatal flaw sewn through his developing lungs. He had been early—horribly, shockingly early. Before Jessie could even go into labor, a team of doctors transferred Neil out of her body and into a plastic uterus where he could finish growing. He had a breathing tube and a feeding tube. His father, Noah, sat by the incubator with his hand on the plastic. He looked at the red and green dots that Neil’s wireless monitoring patch broadcast to the nearby screen. He looked at his phone. He didn’t look at Jessie, who sat on the padded bench across the room, leaking milk through her shirt.

  They both knew whose fault this was. The incubator was an upgrade, as far as Noah was concerned. It was reliable; Jessie was not. It was safe; Jessie was not. It delivered healthy babies; Jessie could not.

  She watched Noah’s hand stroke the shining bubble that covered their son; the plastic was infused with antibacterial and antibiotic chemicals that shielded Neil more effectively than her weak, human flesh. Neil moved like a little pink rabbit in a germ-proof hutch. He would have respiratory problems for the rest of his life, the doctor said. The feeding tube might eventually give way to something less invasive, but he’d need special occupational therapy in order to learn to swallow. He would have no sense of taste. His nose would have a permanent ridge from the breathing mask that pressed into his baby skin.

  Noah and Jessie were married for a year before Neil arrived. For their wedding, Noah, the aspiring theologian, had chosen Anglican vows:

  The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

  He’d been reading G.K. Chesterton. Jessie thought her husband was progressive, and he probably thought he was too. It was easy to be open-minded when nothing was wrong and everything seemed straight and normal and they were just stupid kids, going to coffee after Sunday worship and getting dizzy on mocha espresso shakes. Noah was finishing his pastoral counseling certificate. He adopted the swinging, good-guy tones of a youth minister.

  You know who else was a righteous dude? The Risen Jesus.

  He dressed the part, too, favoring beachwear and often showing up to church in sandals. He wore collared shirts with Hawaiian flowers embroidered on them.

  One of the things Jessie liked about Noah was that he preached acceptance. At first, he seemed to practice it. Let Jesus in. God doesn’t make junk. His bookcases were swollen with copies of religious texts, spiritual writings, and diverse and exotic rituals. He liked to quote Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell and would sometimes weave a Johnny Cash lyric into his junior sermons—no: his “talks.” He was supposed to have the confidence of experience, he told Jessie, but seem like a reliable, cool friend, someone people could come to with their struggles. Someone who was unbothered by his life and had no problems of his own.

  Jessie felt that he was the key to her life. When he held her hand, she sensed the door of her future opening easily, lightly, although she’d battered herself against it alone for what seemed like ages. That’s how it was, in Phoenix, Oregon. There were no gay people there; she’d only ever seen them on TV. She didn’t yet have a word for what she was. With Noah in the picture, things started to get easier. People included her and remembered her name. She didn’t make them nervous anymore. At church, she and Noah had “their” place, at the very front, although saving seats was discouraged and they renounced hierarchy every Sunday and told themselves they were equal under Christ. The Lord doesn’t play favorites.

  Of course He does, Jessie thought. Otherwise, why bother trying to get on His good side? She and Noah exchanged the sign of peace, feeling the congregation’s eyes on them, assessing. She forgot to look at girls, she was so busy preparing to be a pastor’s wife.

  However, the desire was still in her, sleeping. She ignored it, hoping that, by the time she got married, that part of her would be gone. She acted the part and waited for the change to take place. The first time she was with Noah, on their wedding night, he was surprised by the blood on the condom.

  “I didn’t think you were a virgin,” he said. “You don’t kiss like one.”

  “I’ve never been with a man,” she said, which was technically true. Only fingers and lips had explored her. She’d only been with girls, but as hard as she came for them, she believed and hoped in some deep part of herself that because they weren’t guys it didn’t count.

  That first night, Noah tenderly kissed her belly. Jessie felt her lie take hold there and fester, like a bad seed. He wanted to believe she was untouched, so she let him. It was supposed to be a trade, because she wanted to stop falling in love with girls, stop thinking of their skin and thrusting tongues when her husband tried to give her the sanctified pleasure God designated for married people.

  After a couple of months, she thought maybe she would tolerate marriage better if they had a baby. She asked Noah to make her pregnant, and he happily complied. She felt guilty that he was so in love with her. Really, he loved the story she’d let him believe about them, and it excited him to be the first man who ever touched her. He wanted to be her teacher. The condom came off, and still she felt nothing when he fucked her. She learned to make the right sounds to encourage him or console him when he couldn’t finish inside her. It felt like the payment of a debt. Poor Noah.

  That’s why Neil had special needs. God withheld his favor because the marriage was incomplete, because of Jessie. Noah told Jessie he wanted three children. But after Neil, it was obvious that they couldn’t try again. She was blighted; she made sick babies. God had not blessed their union. For this, Noah found it impossible to forgive her.

  Jessie’s sin was contagious, and she’d passed it to their child. Noah knew. He was afraid of her sinfulness. He got rough with her in bed and called her names. He wrapped her hair around his fist and pulled
it hard. They said hateful words to each other. When she stopped sleeping in their bed, he curled up with his laptop instead, jerking off onto her half of the sheets and leaving the mess for her to find.

  If sometimes she said out loud how bad she was, she felt better. Once, after Neil was born, Noah looked at her while she was trying to work the breast pump. The baby was asleep, and she needed to express and relieve the horrible pressure in her tits. She fumbled with the pump, saying it was her fault, all her fault, she’d moved wrong and that’s why it wasn’t working. Noah’s expression stopped her dead.

  “You’re not doing anything,” he said. “It’s your nature. You can’t help the way you are.”

  Right after Neil’s second birthday, Jessie got tired of it and left for Portland: Queer City.

  Noah sent a couple hundred bucks a month. The agreement was to stay married because that was better for insurance and also for Noah’s job. He came up to Portland from Phoenix every couple of months, to be there for Neil’s more serious doctor appointments. He missed them, he said. He missed Jessie. He was finding that it was easier to share the Gospel when life at home was loving and fulfilled. He put his hand on Jessie’s knee in front of the pediatrician and he was still wearing his wedding ring: a hokey thing he’d chosen himself, bands carved from oak and antler.

  He called every week, even though Neil couldn’t talk yet and might not ever, even if he figured out chewing and swallowing. When Jessie stopped responding to his calls, he switched to texts and then just pictures: of himself; of her favorite coffee drink; of the church; of their old friends at band practice; of his penis, throttled purple by his hand. He sent a picture of the Phoenix sign, captioned population 4,496 + 2 people who I wish would come home.

  Why the fuck would she call that place home? They were never going back. Noah told Jessie he was praying for her, and she knew that, if she wanted to get away from him, she’d have to go ahead and fuck somebody else. Not just anybody: someone who owned a dick.