The Animal Girl by John Fulton Read Free Book Online

voice than she’d wanted, “Your electric razor is still in my bathroom.”
    â€œOh,” he said.
    For a moment, she remained silent and fought off an urge to weep. It stung to see this man who had giggled and tumbled in her bed now hold himself at a distance. And when she was sure she would not cry, she laughed. “It was just a fling, right?” Her voice sounded fake, and though she knew this pretense made her ridiculous, she couldn’t help herself.
    â€œSure,” Charles said. “I just wanted to see you again.” He put his head down, and for a moment Kate thought he might cry. But when he looked up again, he managed to smile briefly. “It was nice,” he said.
    He wanted her to agree. He wanted her to say something equally fake and cheerful, but she didn’t.
    Melissa came back to her, as she’d said she would. In the late afternoons, she opened her books on the kitchen table and worked while Kate prepared dinner. One afternoon, Melissa brought dozens ofcollege brochures home from school, and Kate and Melissa paged through them, talking about whether a large or a small college experience would suit Melissa best. Did she want a school with a Greek system? “That’s not for me,” Melissa said. And Kate, who didn’t want to be too influential, was inwardly glad that her daughter would not be a sorority girl. It was far too early to be so absorbed by these questions, but Kate was grateful for any opportunity to talk about her daughter’s future, and Melissa seemed to know this and indulged her.
    In December, Kate’s double vision worsened and she finally left the bank for good. Her doctor recommended that she tape her left eye shut and wear a patch. And so this small part of Kate was already dead. Once or twice a week, she would suffer headaches that were bad enough for morphine. But for the most part, dying was surprisingly painless. More than anything else, it was exhausting, so exhausting that merely standing up was a struggle. At times, death seemed more mundane than frightening. The drawn-out brightness of the mornings, the length of midday and of the late afternoons when she lay on the couch alone waiting for Melissa to come home from school left her fatigued and drowsy.
    Kate still had her bursts of energy, though they’d last now for hours rather than days. When a blizzard descended on Ann Arbor, Kate and Melissa put on their fattest winter coats, gloves, and hats, and walked for more than an hour in the new snow.
    Melissa and Kate almost never spoke of what was happening—and what would soon happen—until one afternoon when Kate was especially sick. She lay over the couch, groggy from painkillers and covered in blankets. Kate had been discussing as lucidly as she could the virtues of Carleton College, while trying to hide the fact that this was the school she would choose for her daughter, when Melissa stopped her with a blunt question. “Does it hurt?”
    Kate looked at Melissa for a moment. “You’re sure you want to know?”
    Melissa nodded.
    â€œSometimes,” she said. “But not as much as I thought it would.”
    â€œBut it hurts.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWill it hurt when it happens?” Melissa wasn’t looking at her. She was paging through a glossy college brochure.
    â€œNo,” Kate said. “I won’t be awake.”
    Melissa shook her head. “I don’t think I want to be there then. If that’s OK.”
    For an instant, Kate wanted to beg her daughter to be there, to stay with her, above all, at that moment. Instead, she nodded. “I’ll be asleep. I won’t know who’s there.”
    â€œIs it OK?” Melissa asked.
    â€œIt’s OK,” Kate said.
    It was raining out when someone knocked. The day nurse had just gone home, and Kate had to summon all her energy to rise from the couch and answer the door. A cold in-suck of air filled the