COUNTER GIRL
Penelope taught me all sorts of things. Like how to stand up straight and walk on my tippy toes all delicate-like the way she did. Whenever she addressed me, she used my name, which made me realize how rarely people did that, just spoke your name out loud like that for all to hear. It embarrassed me, yeah, the way her voice made people pivot in my direction, like I had something worthwhile to say, as if I were capable of anything like that. So yeah, she made me sweat, but kind of in a way I liked. I suppose what I’m getting at, the crux of it all, is that she made me feel special when I knew I was anything but. Her attention, her love, whatever the fuck it was that made her give off heat like the sun—kept me walking on water for weeks on end.
Then it went the way these things tended to go. She up and left, vamoosed, made for the hills, that haunted bitch outright Houdinied me. I was confused, at first, embarrassingly so, then numb and then absolutely fine. I was fine, despite how often the others tried to convince me otherwise with their sideway glances, with their careful word choices and well-meaning but so very misguided suggestions. I was fine when their sympathy curdled into something foul once I started meeting well-wishes with outright hostility. I was fine when they stopped acknowledging me, bumped into me like I wasn’t even there, when their invitations to get sloshed on a Tuesday dwindled. I was even fine when Harry, the boss that is, placed his hand on my lower back, fingers positioned well within the bounds of propriety, like he’d done this sort of thing before, like he’d done this sort of thing a lot and asked, breath thick and wet at my neck: “Would you be so kind as to help me close up tonight?”
That’s when I started taking things, which really wasn’t all that scandalous. I mean I worked there, and sure the products weren’t technically free, but the position came with an employee discount, which if you squinted just right was basically the same thing. That on its own wasn’t enough to get me fired, wasn’t even enough to get the others to turn against me. But that, coupled with the lying, and the boss-fucking and more lying, so much lying, made me the most hated counter girl at the interstate mall.
I lived with my parents on account of being bad with money. I hated living in that house with those people. I don’t remember much from the first few weeks post-Penelope, other than the fact that I was fine if a little annoyed that my performance, or I guess lack thereof, made it so that I had to keep repeating that to others. I didn’t eat much, not because I was trying to starve myself or because I was depressed or anything but because the thought of chewing, swallowing, giving my body exactly what it needed, made me physically ill. I tried to explain that to my mother, the whole eating-being-revolting thing, but she didn’t listen. She never listened. Instead, she’d wring her hands and gossip about me to my father.
•
Worried that the ladies I worked with would finally decide to grow a spine and oust me for the merchandise-hoarding monster that I sometimes was, I decided to get ahead of it, make nice, so to speak. They weren’t so eager to comply, mind you, with my half-hearted attempts at reconciliation. And I suppose if I were to look closely at the problem, which I had up until that moment been ardently avoiding, I’d see, clear as crystal, that the problem laid with me.
I suppose I didn’t have to start stealing products in bulk and when asked about it, pin it on the others. I didn’t have to start sleeping with the boss and once I was nice and fat on all that dick-granted clout, prance about the shop giving orders, making demands, pretending like I was somebody. There were a lot of things I didn’t have to do that I did anyways. It was habit, I guess, or skill. I guess it depended on who you asked. This special way I had of making enemies out of friends. And the counter girls and I used to be chummy, not Eskimo-kisses tight, but pretty damn close. But that was about six months back, around the time I’d wormed my way up from lowly greeter to the lauded position of counter girl. When I’d been all doe-eyed and tight-lipped and oh-so-desperately in need of guidance. Guidance, when she came, all five-foot-four inches of her, knocked me for a fucking loop-de-loop. Her name was Penelope: “Not Penny or Nelly or Nel,” which was what I was told when I pulled one of the others aside to ask about her.
“What do you know?” I had inquired immediately afterward.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean her story. What is it? Where is she from? Where is she going? What’s her middle name? Her favorite color? Why is she here?”
“‘Why is she here?’ As opposed to where?”
“I don’t know,” I said, frustrated beyond belief for some reason I struggled to articulate. Annoyed by the question, the coworker, the setting, I snapped: “Just somewhere else.”
Penelope wasn’t the sort of girl who worked retail. Penelope wasn’t the sort of girl who worked. More like she just sort of stood there and had things handed to her. That, if nothing else, should have made hating her easy, gratifying even. But that, too, was part of her charm, her magic or whatever. I wasn’t prepared for her or accustomed to this. It wasn’t how everyone told me it’d be. I mean, I was insanely horny, which tracked. But being around her also made me feel dumb, not unintelligent exactly, although there was a fair bit of that as well, but like—I don’t know, just not good. And I’ve spent my entire life feeling “not good,” which is why this—this feeling, this girl, this situation—made absolutely no fucking sense. Penelope was flat-chested, left-handed and she smelled like bubblegum. Once, I saw her do a handstand. Totally not my usual type if only because she seemed like the type of person who enjoyed her own company.
I remember exactly how she looked at me at that moment, the coworker I had cornered and bombarded with questions that were none of my business regarding a girl who was even less so. Like I was funny, but also maybe a little pathetic, funnily pathetic or pathetically funny, I guess. I couldn’t stand being looked at like that.
“It’s a doozy at first, I know,” she said. “Give it some time. It won’t disappear, at least not completely, not right away. But it’ll wear off a smidge, give you room to breathe. Just don’t poke at it. Play with it. Encourage it in any way. Give it time to bleed to death, deliberately and inevitably and impossibly final. That’s how you survive this, survive her.” I mean, talk about dramatic. Kudos to her, I remembered thinking, because it was exactly the type of advice I tended to ignore: fortuitous and overly familiar and delivered by someone over five-foot-four.
I thought: What does she know? Some no-name girl from a no-name town who worked in some random mall off the interstate. What could she possibly understand about me or my not-good feelings or my love for a girl I didn’t even freaking know? So, I brushed her off, along with the series of increasingly unsolicited advice she’d direct my way with the confidence of someone who was well and truly fucked. If I’d known what was to come, I would have stuck the little witch, Penelope that is. Although, if pressed, maybe the coworker, too. Picked up something sharp and pointy and dug in deep.
That Christmas, I wished for a Penelope of my own. There wasn’t anything I’d change about her either, which honestly should have been another point against her. I didn’t wish her smaller or taller or thinner. I wanted her, with everything in me, just as she was. So, there I was on my knees, palms kissing, surrounded by scraps of wrapping paper, tinsel foil and the sticky-sweet stench of maple syrup in the air. My mother had walked into the room, spatula in hand, looked at me all but prone on the floor at that point and walked out, post-haste. I was late to work the next day on account of the snow. It drifted down, steady as can be for ten days straight.
•
Harry shepherded us towards the center of the room twenty minutes before we opened with talk of a proclamation.
“Now I know you all must be wondering what I have to say, curious little things you are,” he started: “And I am so very excited to tell you. But not nearly as excited as you’ll be once you hear my news.” He straightened his tie, fingered his belt, looked every single girl straight in their face and generally went about being an absolute ass. Harry’s hair was a shade of blonde that you’d only expect to find on a toddler. As he was a fully grown man, I found it unnerving, and it took everything in me not to show it. If asked, I think what bothered me the most was that it was natural. When he had dropped trou that first time, his body meshed between towering boxes of expired mascara, my mind actually blipped. I tried not to laugh, then I tried not to cry and whatever scrambled mess my face finally decided to settle on, was, I could tell, almost enough to put him off mounting me altogether.
They were just so different from one another. The fact of which was never as glaringly obvious as in that exact moment. A difference that superseded gender. And while everything in me was screaming that I pull up my draws and go, I smothered the impulse. I stayed and refused to regret every second of it. Harry had offered me a job, a girl with no prospects who was bad at money. I remembered thinking: I owed him this, if nothing else. I also remembered thinking he had decent-looking toes.
“As you’re all aware by now, Penelope has decided to leave us. And with her gone, it provides an opportunity for one of my girls to rise to the top. For one very special girl, the most special girl, Penelope’s departure opens the door for advancement. Lead Counter Girl.” Harry paused so we could all appropriately titter and flail. “In the coming weeks, I’ll be observing you closely, your interactions with customers, gauging your knowledge of the products and shop policies. Don’t think of it as a test, rather think of it as more of a performance.”
“Like the theater?”
Harry clapped his hands together, making the girls nearest to him flinch away in fear. “That’s right, lovelies. Think of it as putting on a show for an audience of one, otherwise known as me. Doesn’t that sound like fun? What do you think, girls? You think you can handle it?” We nodded. Harry made a shooing motion with his hand that meant he was finished with us and on that, we dispersed. The girls gathered to discuss the news amongst themselves, effortlessly excluding me as they’ve taken to doing. I ignored them as best I could and commenced with my plotting. My previous endeavors to regain their favor, as lackadaisical as they may have been, reflected a genuine desire to once again be a part of the flock. And while it was true that I had been led astray, however briefly, I was certain, now more than ever, that this was where I belonged. I didn’t need Penelope or her fucking wizardry. And when I won, any other outcome inconceivable, I’d know that I accomplished such a feat solely on my own merits.
•
Harry had taken to scribbling down things inside this gay little notebook. He was so secretive about it, hunched over to shield the pages, back pressed firmly to the wall, that I’d managed to half convince myself whatever he was writing down wasn’t nearly as interesting as he wanted us to believe. That was until I heard one of his more favored girls, Tabitha-Something, boasting about her score in a category called Ability to Befriend. Ability to befriend? This wasn’t a category in which I’d score favorably, what with these hussies making little effort to mask their utter contempt for me. Even though I did all the things I was supposed to do. I apologized when I wasn’t sorry and laughed when they weren’t funny. It wasn’t enough and when I looked at Harry, he was already looking at me. Looking at me and frowning at me and scribbling down all his, what I’m sure were unsavory thoughts in that stupid little notebook. I started weeping, right there at my place of work and when a customer crept towards me, all slow and dumb like a sloth, and asked what was wrong, I have no idea where the idea even came from, but there it was. It shot out, all slippery and unbidden. I told her my mother had died and three days later she really did.
There was so much food at the funeral, full-length tables laden down with meats and pies exposed to the same air as my dead mother. I felt nauseous and then hungry, and then guilty for having felt both.
Harry suggested, in his awkward sort of way, that I take some time away from work. He was suddenly, overwhelmingly concerned with my mental and emotional wellbeing and one of my New Year’s resolutions was to start taking things at face value. So, when Harry sat me down in the back and whispered to me, soft as can be, that he was worried that I wasn’t taking the “appropriate amount of time to grieve”, I decided to believe him. I decided to believe he was capable of something so outside of himself. This thing I had with Harry, the thing where he initiated sex and I didn’t say no, was something that I desperately wanted to end, but saw no clear way out of. I wanted, suppose childishly, to pretend like it never happened.
He didn’t feel the same, the fact of which he’s expressed on many an occasion, mostly when we were alone and sometimes when we weren’t. I thought it, this thing I sometimes did with Harry, would make me feel better or at the very least distract me from how completely fine I was doing. It did neither and I immediately recognized it for what it was––a horribly terrible idea. One I tried to reverse, will into non-existence, oopsie daisy my way out of. Do everything imaginable instead of saying the actual words, the thought of which made my insides feel like they were folding in on themselves. An adult would have said: “While our tryst has been enjoyable, it’s time to put it to an end and go about our merry way.” An adult wouldn’t have gotten herself, messily, embarrassingly, in this situation to begin with.
I wasn’t stupid, despite all evidence to the contrary. I knew this position I found myself in called for a certain level of subtlety, that there was a difference between fraternizing and doing so publicly, blatantly, I-don’t-give-a-fuck-ingly. The first time he did it, touched me in a way that spoke of a relationship beyond the professional when others could see, I thought, thank God. All this late-night fretting about what to do and how to do it, all this not-eating that slimmed me down when I was too sick with worry to enjoy it, was all for nothing. Because Harry, doing nothing more than being true to himself, would manage to fuck it up, quite miraculously, all on his own.
I suppose, if I were to look for a silver lining, it’d be that Harry, so devoted was he in fucking me, was directing his silly little yellow notebook at the others. An unintentional consequence, but one I certainly wasn’t going to discourage. After taking into account my recent loss, the girls found it in their hearts to forgive my philandering ways. That promotion was all but mine, would have been mine already if Harry wasn’t so hell-bent on seeing me whole. He said things like: “Because we’ve grown so close is why I feel comfortable telling you this” and “I think you know why I, of all people, care this much.” He talked, I listened and together we determined that two weeks was more than enough time for me to overcome the shock of my mother’s untimely demise. He thought I needed more time, I assured him I didn’t. The last place in the world I wanted to be was the home I shared, sans one.
“Not that we can’t continue to see each other while you’re away. If anything, we could probably see each other more often.”
I said: “Most certainly not.”
“But–”
“My sorrow is too great.”
“Of course, of course,” he repeated, solemnly.
Everyone dealt with grief in their own way, I’d watched enough daytime television to know at the very least that much, but I found the way my father dealt with his grief absolutely repellant. In the days following the funeral, I learned some things about myself, somewhat ugly things. I learned that grief should not happen around me, near me, in my vicinity. I learned that I was unsympathetic to the pain of others.
Because when my father crumpled in on himself like a house made of straw, I’m talking a fully grown man down on his knees, wailing like he was being spit-roasted in front of God and sundry, I wished him gone. Not dead exactly, at least I don’t think so, just away. Away from here, away from me, I wanted him gone. I wanted to look elsewhere, towards the pitying faces turned my way, look back and see nothing but empty space.
“Let’s go, dad,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
“Why? Why should I? There’s nothing for me there.” I held him close, partly to comfort but mostly to still. I tried not to take his reluctance personally.
Once, when I was little, I swore. It just slipped out. I’d heard a girl say it in class that day and had asked to be excused to the restroom so I could roll the word around in my mouth, get a taste for it, spit it out into the toilet bowl when I was done. My mother washed my mouth out with soap until I was choking on the suds.
“Because,” I started, suddenly unsure how to tell a fully-grown man, my father, that he was causing a scene. That he was embarrassing me. Unsure how to tell him that we had to go home because there was nowhere else to go. What I really wanted to do was tell him I didn’t have time for this. I was having weird and uncomfortable sex with my boss, and I didn’t have time for his midlife meltdown.
And I know I should have done something, something other than stand there and stare, but all I could think about was how mortified mother would be, if she were still upright and perky, if she were still able to do anything other than lie there and rot. Mother was nothing if not proper, properly puritanical, and she’d find this display—the crying, the sweating, the noise—so very distasteful. When I was finally allowed my own room, she wouldn’t let me put posters on the wall.
“–Because that’s where we live, and we can’t stay here.”
“Convince me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Convince me why I should go with you.”
“I–”
“Tell me why going home with my least favorite child is somehow better than wasting away right here, right now, in this room full of people, next to the woman I love.”
“Loved, dad. Not ‘love.’ Past tense. Because she’s in the past now. Because she’s dead. As in deceased, expired–”
“Stop,” he whispered.
“–As in worm food. As in dearly departed. As in never ever coming back.”
“Please.”
His words, softly spoken and one of the rare instances in which I didn’t doubt their sincerity, only succeeded in pissing me right off. I proceeded to take not inconsiderable pleasure in cutting and slicing and burrowing in until I hit bone. “Gone but not forgotten. Resting in peace. Bereft of life. Pushing up daisies. We regret to fucking inform you–”
“OK,” he said, a wobble in his voice that he tried hard to suppress. The effort it took evident all over his face. “We can go home. Just please, stop.” Any semblance of composure he’d managed to obtain dissolved, once again, into a fully formed fit.
When I was fifteen and finally started menstruating, years after my friends, my mom canceled my cell service and removed my bedroom door. She said it was to help me be good. My father said nothing.
What followed shortly thereafter wasn’t any easier. I threw a sheet over his body, where I found it, I haven’t a clue. I think Uncle Tony had given it to me, handed it over along with a supportive smile. I was envious of that smile, the way he could just dust it off and pull it out like it was easy, like his brain wasn’t atrophying with the strain. I tried to replicate that look: The curl of the lips, the tilt of the head, position my eyebrows the way he did. Arranged my features in a way that managed to convey, I hoped, this bland sense of empathy. I thought I owed my father at least that much.
I tried to imagine what a good daughter would do, if she, like me, were tasked with absconding into the night with an adult male swaddled in her arms. I thought about this fictional daughter while I bundled him up in that wide expanse of white material, subconsciously, I think, wanting to hide his shame, or, more accurately, what I deemed shameful. And I guess I had hoped, at least in part, that the sheer absurdity of it all would make the poor bastard come to his senses, but alas, he carried on, perfectly unperturbed. If anything, his weeping grew louder. And as I all but dragged his considerable mass across a room chock-full of people, I, for reasons unbeknownst even to me, kept muttering, to anyone who would listen: “I’m sorry, he’s usually not like this.”
All this to say that I wanted desperately to return to work. I missed the mall, the girls, hell, I even missed Harry. This is why I had initially returned to work so quickly, only for Harry to grow a conscience at the most inconvenient of times and shepherd me right back out the door. And besides, I liked my job. I liked it more than I liked any other aspect of my life. It fulfilled me in some unidentifiable way and try as I might to explain that to my parents, back when I was invested in doing such things, back when there were two of them, they had assumed I was either lying or daft, likely both.
•
“Do you really have to go?”
For what felt like the hundredth time, I said: “Yes, dad. I really must go. Harry promised—Harry said that the shop is grossly understaffed. Something about several girls calling out sick or pregnant. Honestly, he wasn’t all that specific. But I got the gist: I’m needed.”
I’d spent the last few achingly long weeks, researching things like: “How to develop empathy” and “What does it mean when your mother dies unexpectedly, and the sight of your father’s puffy eyes make you want to vom?” All in Incognito Mode of course, because I at least had the decency to recognize my shame and the wherewithal to try and hide it. I didn’t like this, any of this. I didn’t like being forced to feel things so unpleasant. I didn’t like being forced to feel these unpleasant things by a father who only just recently started to acknowledge me.
“But I need you more. It’s just you and I now. Now and maybe forever.”
“Christ, I hope not.” The silence that befell us then was long enough for me to regret what I’d said, but not nearly long enough for me to work out how to unsay it.
“Why would you say something like that?” He whispered, voice just short of shaky, eyes threateningly damp.
“Why would you say something like that?” Angry now, so irrationally angry.
“I don’t know. Maybe because I thought the feeling would be reciprocated? That my child could find it in her heart to comfort a dying man?” I all but gasped.
“Don’t tell me you’re fucking dying, too.” For someone who, up until a short time ago, had never experienced death in any form, not of a distant relative, not even of a goddamn goldfish because my mother hadn’t permitted a pet or what she blithely termed “The poor man’s slave,” I was certainly getting my fill now.
“We’re all dying, baby. Everyday. That’s my point.” Then he started to cry and salivate and otherwise produce fluids in a way that I know he knew that I hated. “It’s just that ever since what happened, I’ve been acutely aware of my earthly limitations.” Oh, he could fuck right off.
“I know, dad.” I said, “We’re all doing the best we can.” I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d said in a long while, but he seemed to eat it up. Figuring now was as good a time as any, I made soothing sounds and shuffled my way towards the door. In a shocking demonstration of vitality, my father flung his bulk across the room, effectively cutting off my only avenue of escape. I’d like to say that, in the face of such adversity, I responded with the level of sensitivity the situation deserved. Unfortunately, I reacted rather poorly to a man in his sixties behaving like a literal goddamn child. I threatened to leave him for Harry, to run away, to die.
I said: “If you don’t move away from that door right the fuck now, I swear to God I will drop down, right here, right now and die.” And when I was sure I couldn’t possibly spew anymore venom, persisted: “You think you’re miserable now? You think this pain is unbearable? Just you wait, I can make this all so much worse for you.”
He moved; I ran.
•
I walked into the shop, not knowing what to expect, but expecting more than what I got, which was nothing. The girls didn’t so much as turn in my direction, not even when I said, haltingly, disgustingly, “Hi.” They were gathered in a circle: The girls, the customers, Harry, with Penelope standing at its center. For one fleeting, stomach-churning second, I thought maybe she was here for me. That she’d heard of my misfortune and dropped everything to come and provide me solace. I almost asked her if she ever thought about me, realized how that sounded, and, thankfully, strangled the urge. She turned, the first to see me and said: “Hi.” Not like the way I had said it, of course. Not at all like the way I had said it. I’m sure the quiet that followed was all in my head.
Franchesca Viaud holds a B.A. in English Literature from Boston University and is currently enrolled in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst, where she also teaches critical writing.
