and beans, expired six months ago. I shove ten crackers in my mouth and am almost instantly better.
I’m scared to make noise, so I don’t heat up the beans in the microwave. I jump at the little slice of light when I grab a beer from the refrigerator.
I shove down the first bite of congealed beans in direct line of sight with Betty Crocker’s spine, barely visible in the shadows.
Chicken and Dumplings. I can see the picture in my head, a mushy, unappetizing blob shot in a pre-Instagram world. Except it was delicious when my mother made it. I know the exact page number, 95. The list of ingredients. Bisquick, chicken-mushroom soup, 1 cup of frozen peas and carrots. My mother let me run a permanent black pencil line through the celery. Better with ¼ teaspoon garlic salt, was the advice of her messy scrawl.
Halfway into the can of beans and all the way through the beer, my head feels pretty solid.
I tidy up like I was never there. Wash the spoon and stick it back in the drawer. Rinse the cans and put them in my backpack. I do all of this in the dark with just a little bit of moon spilling through the pineapples.
It’s worrying me, where I should sleep. I’d thought about it all the way from the hotel. Odette’s bed feels wrong. Creepy. The couch in the living room feels exposed. I walk into Odette’s bedroom and open the closet. I flash my phone light around. The dry-cleaning bag with her police uniform, still hanging. The four legs, still in a row.
The closet is carpeted and decent-sized—enough room for me to sleep if I curl up just a little. On the top shelf, two extra pillows and a bunch of quilts. Once again, it feels like Odette is saying Welcome.
I tuck the dry-cleaning bag onto the rack with the rest of her clothes, out of sight. I examine the legs. Two of the four are metal prosthetics with a foot attached to the bottom, versions very similar to the one she wore—maybe old legs that she couldn’t part with.
The third is not a leg but a super-realistic, custom full-skin sleeve, to slide over her prosthetic for fancier occasions. A Hollywood prop. A piece of art, really. I pick it up and turn it over, curious. Painted toenails, a slightly redder heel, faint blue veins, the bulge of a calf muscle that must have matched her real one.
The last is a sleek running blade. It reminds me of an Oscar Pistorius Nike commercial I watched before Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend and no one wanted him for their TV spots again.
He was flying on black blades like a god. His words, defiant.
They told me that I’d never walk … that I would never compete with other kids … that a man with no legs can’t run … anything else you want to tell me?
Anything else you want to tell me?
It’s like Odette’s legs are lined up, asking me the same question.
As sleeping companions, they are not going to be very good cats. But it seems disrespectful to disturb them.
I pile the blankets into a comfortable pad and leave the closet door cracked for air. I lay my head on the pillow, my knees drawn up just slightly so my feet don’t knock over the legs. Ten minutes. Twenty. I flip one way and then the other. And repeat and repeat. When I hear a noise, I wonder if it’s my father. Every sound at night since I was ten has been sent by him.
Something else is bugging me.
I slide open the closet and pad down the hall in my socks. Fumble for the switch to the outside porch light.
Turn it off.
Open the front door. Unwrap the flag.
Turn the porch light back on.
Flip the finger to the old man on the wall.
After that, I barely remember my head hitting the pillow.
No quiero entrar el armario con las piernas.
I don’t want to go in the closet with the legs.
I’m good at Spanish, but I’ve never dreamed in it.
Creo que Señor Finn estaba aquí.
I think Mr. Finn has been here.
My eyelids flash open. I’m not dreaming. People are a few feet away, outside the closet door. A window opening. The start-up of a vacuum, maybe in the living room.
My group home instincts fly back.
Alguien viene!
Someone’s coming!
That was a standard hiss from Lucy Alvarez—at ten the youngest of all of us, whose bed was closest to the door at the