The Snake That Killed Eurydice

The widows’ pity gnaws at me. Their puffed lower lips, the downturned corners of their red eyes. I take a crooked pleasure in it, a masochist for their biting glances. For the first time in my life, I’m proud of the youthful chunk of my cheeks. Makes me look sadder, more innocent. I’m the youngest woman here by twenty years, which of course means my storm cloud’s the grayest. They’ll think that’s why I look so thin, so dog-tired. Do feel sorry for me, won’t you?

Their stares would be sharper if they knew what I’d done to be here. But that’s between me, the dog, and the rats. And my husband, if I tell him.

The Widows’ Lounge reeks of antiseptic and stale poison and mothballs. They’ve tried to make it homey: a plant in the corner, last month’s glossies on the end tables, pocket packs of tissues branded “ORFIO” in their signature blue. I nabbed two when I first arrived, before I knew they were meant for tears. I might put them back, but what would the others think?

A television flips through a slideshow of happy women, smiling and twirling like a tampon ad. They’re hugging translucent men, desaturated and pixelated, their torsos windows to the setting sun behind them.

I liked these pictures in the brochure. They’d made me hopeful. But flitting by on the screen, they seem over-the-top, bad actors pretending.

My heel won’t stop bouncing, jiggling the flappy skin on my thigh, the leftover casing from fat and muscle once there. Beautiful curves stolen by nights spent too awake.

He’ll see me like this soon, and he’ll compare. To the woman he knew – the healthier, younger me.

And to the other woman, too.

I dig through my purse, looking for food, but I come up with just a mint and a pack of playing cards. I wish I’d had breakfast. Maybe my shrink was right. Leave dead enough alone. But she doesn’t know the whole story, so what does she know?

“Don’t lie to your fucking therapist,” I scold myself most late nights.

“But you have to lie,” I scold the scolder, and there, between two rocks, I’m trapped.

Those are the same two me’s who couldn’t decide on ORFIO.

“You can hug him again!” said I who fell in love. “You can tell him the truth!”

“But you’ll have to hug him again,” said I who fell out of love. “And what if he finds out the truth?”

The women on the screen cackle: Ha! You fell for the bullshit!

The bullshit.

“He remembered it was our wedding anniversary,” the saleswoman said the second time we met. “That made it all worth it, you know?”

She was caressing a framed photo of her husband. Her desk brimmed with them, snapshots of her and him and their perfect children at various ages. I’d believed her longing. Even convinced myself I wanted what she was selling: to hug him, to kiss him, to be relieved when he remembered our wedding anniversary.

I signed the papers shortly after. Coughed up a check for thirty-two grand like it was nothing. Like I hadn’t just spent the last eight months donating plasma and eggs and opinions across the state. All to sleep again.

***

The pitiful glances have slowed, so I take to my phone. I open my messages and scroll to Yuri’s thread. I haven’t touched our texts since the week he died, but I need conversation starters. Lately I’ve been struggling to remember the details of our life – which side of the bed he slept on, who gave the dog her thyroid pills. But only two years have passed, so I have to pretend, for his sake.

“Pill given,” he writes at 8:32am, the morning he died. That’s something. Otherwise, the texts don’t give many clues. They’re not intimate or sweet, not filled with inside jokes.

Me: Want chicken for dinner?

Him: Sounds good.

Me: Love you.

Him: Same.

Him: Working late.

Me: Again?

Not at all like the sweepingly romantic texts I’d found on his phone.

A nurse in gray-blue scrubs opens the door and calls my first name. I don’t move.

“Lyra?” she repeats.

I scan the room. Are you Lyra? You? Which one of you is the selfish, frightened little bitch who can’t stand up?

“Lyra Viper?”

His last name. I’ve held it ransom for five years, but it still belongs to him. I wanted to return to my maiden name after his death, resurrect the old me, but I worried how it might look.

“Whoops! That’s me.” When I stand, my knees buckle.

The nurse holds the door open, smiling. As I pass under the frame, I turn back – I can’t stop myself – and ask the room, “Anyone here a mistress?”

Their faces widen with shock. Bulbed white eyes, parted lips exposing the tips of yellow teeth. I hold back my grin. I know the answer’s no. Widows are wives, and wives are the ones who do stuff like this, who shell out that kind of dough in search of something.

“Let’s go, ma’am,” the nurse says, now stern like a teacher.

She slams the door and ushers me through a maze of hallways, snaking past doors with names like Lotus and Larkspur and mine, Wildflower. Wildflower is a quiet blue, with a set of drawers, a rolling stool, and a dentist’s chair centered under a fluorescent light.

“Sit,” she says, like I’m her little dog. She hasn’t spoken to me since the waiting room, but her thick lips and purple hair make it seem like she’d be a talker.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I say, because in a few minutes I’ll be dead, and I’m trusting her to bring me back, and, in the end, it doesn’t cost anything to be kind, right?

“How’re you feeling?” she asks, because she has to.

I tell her what she wants to hear. “Good. Excited.”

“Were you planning to change?”

I’m in denim cut-offs and a white tank top, and not carrying a tote that might suggest a change of clothes, so she means it to be cruel.

“No good? I spent all week picking it out.”

She pouts. “I’m sure you know your husband better ‘an me.” She gives me a clipboard. “Make sure we’ve got the right man.”

On top’s a picture of my husband wearing a tux on our wedding day. His eyes are blue and sparkling, like pool ripples, and his cheeks are creased by an honest smile. I caress the picture, copying the saleswoman, checking if it stirs something in me. Doesn’t.

I flip to the next page, the laser-printed distillation of him. Yuri Viper, 32 (evermore). The names of his parents, his nephew, his primary care doctor. His occupation and the address we shared before I sold the house. (Ditched two months after his death, unable to sleep in that bed anymore.) And red as his favorite color.

“The color’s wrong. He liked maroon.”

She peeks at the clipboard. “Rest of it correct?”

I nod.

“Think it’s fine then. Sign at the bottom.”

I sign with my maiden name because it’s habit, and because I’m frustrated, and because I want to die as myself.

“Good you noticed, though,” she says while I sign. “Had a patient who didn’t read the packet. Sent her to the wrong guy. Ya know, once you’re in, you’re in. We don’t got eyes on you. Well, the guy was a rapist and a murderer, so you can imagine.”

I snap my fingers. “I know who you remind me of.”

“Oh?”

“Annie Wilkes.”

Is that a smile?

“The rules,” she says, then gets to it. No eating or drinking. Touching’s allowed, but only if he initiates. Don’t say his full name, but nicknames are fine.

“You’ll have ‘til the sun sets, ‘bout an hour. And whatever you do, don’t find out what death’s like.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t bring you home if you know.”

“What’re we supposed to talk about then?”

“You think we let people find out the great mysteries of life, just like ‘at?”

I did think that. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Better not be.”

I should ask for a new nurse. You’re about to die, you fucking doormat. But I’ve been conditioned to nod, to go along, to yes-and. So I say nothing.

She takes a buzzing razor to my head, and chunks of curly hair fall to the floor. My eyes water.

“Will it –” I start, but a prickle of shame shuts me up.

“He’ll see you with hair.” I can practically hear the ker-clunk of her eyes rolling to the back of her head.

“Can I bring these?” I flash the pack of playing cards.

“Don’t see why not. Just hold ‘em real tight.”

She plants cold stickers on my scalp and clips on electrodes with a satisfying click, like fingers interlocking. Then she pulls down my tank top, baring my left nipple, and bless her, she doesn’t flinch at that long, dark hair I haven’t plucked since he was alive.

My tit’s still out when she comes at me with a thick needle.

“You gonna pass out?”

“I’m fine,” I say, but I turn away as she jabs the fleshy pit of my elbow.

She takes a device from the bottom drawer. It’s the size of a bread loaf and bright pink. She opens the lid, sets the blood inside, pushes some buttons, and places it behind my head, which tugs on the wires. My skull tingles. My breath catches.

“Are you ready?” she asks, but before I can answer, my heartbeat flutters, skips, then stops.

***

The options were beach, forest, mountains, and desert. Yuri would’ve preferred desert. He always liked the aridness of it, the smell of creosote after rain. Probably the phallic, forked nature of cacti, too.

But I’m glad I chose beach, though this one’s not particularly special. The water’s murky, the current’s rough, and the sand’s bristly, but I take off my sneakers anyway, scrunch my toes in the sand. Do the ORFIO people pipe in that briny smell, the seagull squawks, the pretty, pretty sunset?

It’s empty, and I hate it. I prefer my beaches crowded. Music blasting over speakers. Children shrieking. Loud, gossipy conversations. I like comparing bodies, making myself jealous.

It’s been ten minutes, maybe fifteen. The sun is already threatening its westward escape. I stare at the boardwalk that cuts through the dunes, but no shadows approach. It never occurred to me he might not show. I assumed he’d want to see me. I pull the cards from their box and flick them under my thumb.

Something damp grabs my shoulder. I drop the cards and turn.

I guess I expected him old and withered. Or a jangling pyramid of bones with maggots where his eyes once were, worms crawling through his rib cage. Or see-through, like the men in the brochure. But it’s just him, my husband, and he’s happy. I smile, but it feels like the smile of a cornered dog.

He throws his arms around me. The scent’s familiar, timber and leather and bananas. But his skin is so frigid we might stick together, like tongues to an icy pole. It’s a relief when he releases me and we’re still separate bodies.

“You brought cards,” he says, pleased.

“Wanna play?” It feels flirtatious, like asking him to bed. We crouch to gather them.

Bluff’s our game, played it every night after dinner. We sit cross-legged facing one another and dig out two divots. We each draw a card without looking and set it in the hole, facing our opponent. High card wins. In place of money, we agree to tally lines in the sand.

Not two minutes in, he starts, “So are you dating?” He can’t help himself. He’s always been jealous.

“Did you miss me?” I ask.

“More than anything,” he says, but his nose scrunches. That infamous scrunch.

I think of him that day on the couch, dopey at his phone. I asked him what he was looking at. He said, “Googling the dog’s symptoms,” but his nose crinkled, like a stupid little piggy.

I tracked that phone, glued to his hand, for four hours. When the shower door shut, I snatched it off the bed. Took three tries to unlock, but there I found messages between him and Missy, four years’ worth.

Everything might’ve turned out different if it’d just been nudes. But there were heart emojis. Professions of love. Lengthy discussions about leaving me.

“Who’s the lucky guy?” he asks again.

“Too busy to date,” I say. “Saving for this.”

“How much was it?”

I tell him. He smiles like he’s grateful, and I almost fall for it. We flip the cards around. I have an 8, he has a 7. I’ve won four ticks, and we go again.

“We have until sunset,” I say, glancing at the horizon. The clouds are a deep red. His favorite color, almost.

He raises one eyebrow. “So are you here ‘cause of the phone?”

“I’ll bet three.”

He checks. He’s got a 10, I’ve a 4. Shit. I pull two more cards.

“I’d do it,” he says.

“Do what?”

“Look at your phone. See what you were up to in your last days.”

“Privacy’s privacy,” I say. “Not any different when you’re dead.”

He exhales. “Appreciate that. Thanks.”

I win that round.

“But I did go through your phone,” I say.

“What the fuck?”

“While you were alive.”

A beat. “So you saw.”

“What’re you betting?”

“Did you see, Lyra?”

Both our cards are 5. I deal two more. His is a 2, and I feign disappointment.

“I saw.”

“All of them?”

Like a bee clonking against my forehead, I realize, “There were more than Missy?”

The clouds are a violent red, and the sun stalks closer to the wavetops. He’s silent for three rounds. So am I. I refuse to change the subject, to ask again. He wins two games, I win the third.

“It’s not that bad here,” he offers.

I put my finger to my lips. “We can’t talk about death.”

“Why not?”

“Makes me stay here or something.” I think of Nurse Wilkes. She’d probably love if I got stuck. “Served ‘er right,” she’d chuckle.

“What do you want to talk about then?” he says.

The sun casts a tunnel of rippled light along the water. I draw a slow breath.

He wants the closure too, says I in love.

He’s going to hurt you, says the other.

“I put it in your stew,” I whisper.

“Put what?” He tilts his head, draws his eyebrows together, and crinkles his forehead innocently. For the briefest moment, I almost love him again.

“Rat poison,” I say.

“In the stew?” He sounds truly betrayed. Anything but the stew! “Rat poison, really? How many times did it take?”

“What d’ya mean?” I say. “All at once.”

Half the sun’s hidden. I have fifteen marks. He has thirteen. I could stop playing now and come out on top. But I deal one more hand, because I’m an addict, and because no one plays the game like him.

“When’d you plan it?” he asks. “How far in advance?”

“Does it matter?”

“Kind of.”

“Saw the texts Tuesday.”

He spurts a laugh. “You thought about it for one day?” He’s mad, or hurt, or impressed.

“I raise five.”

He checks. The win’s riding on this. And he’s showing a 4.

I almost apologize, but I stop myself. “You were gonna leave me.”

He flips his card to see the 4. Then he reaches for mine and chucks it in the sand – a 3. Fuck.

“I’m guessing you didn’t get caught?” he says.

“Told the cops I’m a good sleeper. That I didn’t notice you were gone ‘til the morning.”

He smirks. “Worst sleeper I know.”

“That night was the worst, Yuri. I felt so bad.”

There’s a sliver of sun left, staining the sky a dying red. He shakes the sand off the cards and hands them to me.

He glares at me, dark like the deep end of a pool. “I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“You poisoned me. Figured when I started seizing.”

So that’s why he came. Not because he loves me. To see if I’d apologize.

But it feels like a window, like maybe he’ll absolve me. Maybe I’ll finally sleep again.

The light is fading.

I whimper, “I need you to forgive me.” It’s the best I can muster, but it feels good coming out, like vomiting expired fish.

He yanks me to my feet and hugs me close. He’s freezing, but it’s a relief, like wind on a scorching day.

“I love you,” he whispers in my ear.

“Really?”

“And, I swear, it isn’t that bad here…”

“I’m glad.”

“I live in this little red bungalow in the desert,” he says, clutching me to him. “Cerby’s there, too. Told you about him, from when I was a kid. Never had thyroid issues.”

“Wait, don’t tell me.” I struggle away, but he clings tighter, too tight, tongue to pole. “Don’t talk about – ”

“And Ma lives nearby. She’s got this gorgeous place in a wildflower field –”

I try to cover my ears, but he’s locked my elbows to my sides. I hum, but he talks louder. I sing, so he yells, sharing everything he knows about death.

I wish the widows were here, their pitying stares gnawing the skin from my bones, nibbling me to nothing, so I might wriggle free.

The sun sets. We’re both still here. And I’m having trouble sleeping.