eileen | ottessa moshfegh
notes:
I slept in the attic, on a cot purchased by my father for some summer camping trip he never took a decade earlier.
My father, however, was scared of the dark. That may sound like an endearing peculiarity, but it was not.
This one evening—I’ll begin my story there—I found him sitting barefoot on the stairs, drinking the sherry, the butt of a cigar between his fingers.
Imagining his parents beating him as a child is the only path to forgiveness that I have found so far. It isn’t perfect, but it does the trick.
Mr. Lewis, who worked there, was so gentle and happy, as though it had never occurred to him just what all that liquor was for.
But a few times, during my darkest hours—I was so moody—when I felt impelled to drive off a bridge or, one particular morning, had a compulsion to slam my hand in the car door, I imagined what relief I might feel if I could lie on Dr. Frye’s couch just once and confess like some sort of fallen hero that my life was simply intolerable.
When he was alone he had an ominous kind of stillness, like a slingshot being pulled back too hard.
You know me. I spent many hours wondering who might have been the recipient of Randy’s sexual misconduct.
By the time I turned thirty I’d learned how to relax, wink in the mirror, fall charmingly into the arms of countless lovers. My twenty-four-year-old self would die from shock at the quick death of my prudence. And once I left X-ville and filled out a bit, bought some clothes that fit me right, you might have seen me walking down Broadway or Fourteenth Street and thought I was a graduate student or maybe the assistant to some famous artist, on my way to pick up his check from the gallery. What I mean to say is that I was not fundamentally unattractive. I was just invisible.
To my great embarrassment, on occasion I had mistakenly called her “Mom.” Mrs. Stephens rolled her eyes then and chimed sarcastically—gums glistening, bubbles of saliva popping in a broad grin, that damn caramel candy clanking against her back teeth—“Of course, dear, whatever makes you happy.” I’d laughed and cleared my throat and corrected myself. “Missus Stephens.”
Those icicles hanging above the front door must have grown by several inches while I’d been gone, since I remember reaching up and touching the tip of one and being disappointed by its bluntness.
I didn’t like movies for the same reason I don’t like novels: I don’t like being told how to think.
And at the time, I didn’t believe my body was really mine to navigate. I figured that was what men were for.
“Should I open it?” I went and picked up the whiskey.
“By any means necessary,” my father said.
I got over my childhood fear of the dark that day, I suppose. Nothing came at me—no angry spirits attacked me, no restless ghosts tried to suck out my soul. They left me alone down there, which was just as painful.l for courtesy, service, and reliability.
But I said nothing: I didn’t want him to know how much he displeased me. It was important to me that he not know he had the power to make me miserable.
But honestly, even in those darkest moments, the idea of anyone examining my naked corpse was enough to keep me alive. I was that ashamed of my body.
It’s a romantic story and it may not be accurate at this point since I’ve gone over it again and again for years whenever I’ve felt it necessary or useful to cry.
I loved navy blue. Whatever I wore in that color reminded me of a uniform, something that I felt validated me and obscured me at once.
In any case, this woman was beautiful and looked vaguely familiar in the way all beautiful people look familiar.
It is a peculiar posture of insecure people. They feel most comfortable denying any perspective whatsoever rather than proclaiming any allegiance or philosophy and risk rejection and judgment.
I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul, though I doubt they saw me at all.
He had a stiff posture, I remember, and was thin but had broad shoulders—the awkward confluence of a young boy’s ease and a man’s imposing heft and brutishness.
I shook my head gruffly, as though the image of the boy would get dislodged from my brain, scuttle out my ears, and leave me alone.
grown woman is like a coyote—she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats. Leave them alone for too long and they’ll die of sadness.
Something struck me as I watched Randy scratch his elbow, then lean against the door frame of the visitation room: I was no longer in love with him.
Her wrinkles were long and saggy, as though her face had once been bigger, fuller, but had been deflated, leaving deep folds dug like trenches.
how she managed to gain my trust. First she solicited my envy, then she worked to extinguish it.
The shame of arousal, the arousal of shame.
The one time I’d dared to ask him not to pick on me, he burst out laughing, then feigned a heart attack the next morning. When the ambulance arrived, he was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette. He said he felt fine. “She’s on the rag or something,” he told the paramedics. They all shook hands.
Violence was just another function of the body, no less unusual than sweating or vomiting. It sat on the same shelf as sexual intercourse. The two got mixed up quite often, it seemed.
Like a favorite song you’ve heard so many times it begins to annoy you, or like when you scratch an itch so hard it begins to bleed,
my mother’s angry corpse.
[from this point I finished it as an audiobook, no more notes]
janet change 