“So, what,” she says, “are you gonna sit here all afternoon and tell sob stories or are we gonna ride some rollercoasters?”
She’s already gotten up.
“We’re gonna sit here all afternoon telling sob stories. Sit down.”
“Ok, Mr. Masochist. I’ll sit down. I’ll do what you say.”
“Two cousins—” I say.
“Two cousins, ok,” Clarity says, talking over me.
“Are you gonna listen to my story?”
“Purity never told me you were so angry.”
“Well I am. I am angry! You wanna go play dress up with Purity, go ahead.”
“I hate you fucking both. Purity drags me out here, you’re the two in a one-two punch.”
“Two cousins!” I say.
Clarity sits down, lights a cigarette. She looks at me, waiting.
“Two cousins are having a pillow fight. Twins. One hits the other, she falls, her head hits the corner of a dresser, she goes limp, falls, never gets up.”
“What do you mean she never gets up.”
“I mean she dies, that corner of that dresser hits her in the head just the right way that she dies. She never gets up. She goes into a pillow fight alive and never comes out.”
“Bullshit.”
“Why would I lie to you? I barely fucking know you.”
“Whose cousins are these?”
“Mine. Dad’s side.”
“You know, that’s a fucked-up story. And if you weren’t being such an asshole I might have some sympathy for you and your dead paternal cousin and her identical twin sister but under the current circumstances you can fuck yourself and find someone else to bum cigarettes off for the rest of the day. I hate smokers who aren’t really smokers that don’t have their own cigarettes. What happened to the other cousin? Bet it messed her up for life.”
“Yeah, it did. She committed suicide.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, she did.”
“Fuck you for telling me that story! What is wrong with you?! Tell me you’re lying, right now. Tell me what you just said isn’t true.”
“Well, I would say that, but it is true.”
Clarity looks at her lap and shakes her head.
“She was like emotionally fucked for her entire short life and would only talk with me and like one other person. She never had a boyfriend. They kept both girls’ rooms exactly like they were except for the dresser where the first one hit her head. There was just an empty spot and you could still see the ruts in the floor where the feet pressed into the carpet.”
“Are you kidding? Are you kidding me with this story?”
“No.”
Clarity wipes away a tear with the back of her cigarette hand.
“Holy shit, that’s fucked.”
“Yeah, well, that’s life.”
“That’s some of life,” Clarity says. “I don’t believe you told me that story. If I ever find out that isn’t true I will cut your balls off while you’re sleeping. Fucking asshole. Well?”
“Well what?”
“Am I gonna have to slice off your balls?”
I shake my head.
“Not in this case.”
“God, that’s fucked up. And what is it about them being twins that makes it so much worse?”
“Because,” I say, “it makes it into a story of person versus person, self versus self. Since they’re twins it makes your mind question the ways in which one part of you is killing off the parts of you that it itself needs, thereby killing itself. Murder is really suicide, if we’re all connected—”
“Ok, ok, ok, enough literary analysis. These are your cousins and this is how you talk about them?”
“Well they’re dead now.”
“Well show some respect,” Clarity says.
We’re quiet for a long time. Clarity gets to the bottom of her cigarette. She pushes the box in my direction.
I just stare at it.
“You’ve got five seconds,” she says.
So I get out of my thoughts and grab a Parliament, light it, put the lighter back in the box, and slowly slide the box across the table, looking at Clarity the whole time.
Clarity opens the box, lights herself up, and she’s a few drags in before she just asks me straight out:
“The one who killed herself..how did she do it.”
I sigh.
“Come on,” Clarity says. “You’re the one who decided to supercharge our little table sit with tales of gore and woe, so I think you owe me an explanation of how the other sister killed herself. I’m not gonna break.”
“Clarity, I owe you an apology—”
“Fuck you I don’t want your apology. I want to know how the other one died after she gave her sister a hemorrhage of the brain in a pillow fight or whatever happened to her head.”
I shake my head with my eyes closed.
“What?? You’re all sensitive all of a sudden? You obviously told me that story as an act of aggression so finish me off, prize fighter. You got me against the ropes. That was a hell of a left hook. So hit me with your right. And don’t criticize my boxing metaphors or I’ll get up from this table and I swear you’ll never see me again.”
“I like your boxing metaphors. I think you’re incredible, Clarity.”
“How did she die?”
I set my cigarette on the woven metal table.
“Their names were Belinda and Melinda. Don’t make fun of their names. They have a pillow fight. Belinda hits Melinda in the face hard. Melinda goes down, on the way down hits her head right on the corner of this dresser, she has a brain hemorrhage, as you guessed. She’s knocked unconscious. She dies before she gets to the hospital. That’s Melinda. Belinda..goes crazy. Won’t talk to anyone. One day she lies down in her sister’s bed with a can of lighter fluid and lights herself on fire. Burns down the entire house, which my aunt and uncle and about five more of my cousins lived in. Fortunately..unfortunately..they were all out at a soccer game. Belinda was the only one killed. Except her sister. Who she killed with a pillow in a pillow fight so I’m just saying, I try not to live with an abundance of caution but when someone invites me to do something fun..for a fraction of a second, my mind flashes to me all the ways in which this supposedly fun thing could turn out to be very not fun.”