B & B by Celeste Ng
In the summer she misses the chalk. Pink chalk is a treat, dissolving on her tongue with a sweet effervescent hiss she can feel on the back of her throat. She imagines it resembles champagne, almost fruity, floating against her palate. But it is hard to come by. White chalk is more widely used, more plentiful, like bread. She never takes the whole stick, only the ground-down nubs too short to use, so each time the teacher dusts his palms on the back of his jacket she mentally measures the remaining piece. It is hard to wait. She has developed a technique: as the other students file out at the sound of the bell, she trails along after, dragging her hand along the tray at the base of the blackboard, sliding the stub of chalk along the groove until it hits the end and pops into her hand. In the hallway she slides it into her pocket, to be savored on the long walk home, and licks the dust from her fingers.
But in the summer there is no chalk. One year, on the last day before vacation, she stole a full box of chalk from a teacher’s desk drawer. She had planned to ration it out, a quarter-inch per day, to last until the fall. But the weight of it in her pocket was irresistible. On the way home from school she stopped off in the park and crunched stick after stick until the whole box was gone. She could buy chalk; she’s fifteen, she gets ten dollars a week allowance. But chalk handed across the drugstore counter just isn’t the same. So in summer she makes do with other things, anything with that starchy taste: cash register receipts, plaster, subscription cards filched from her mother’s decorating magazines. The best are the Better Homes and Gardens; she likes to nibble at the tiny photographs of beautifully dressed and empty living rooms. She’s done this since she was a child, and she knows just how to palm these things whenever her mother looks away.
In the summer, too, business at the inn is slow. This week her mother has only one guest, a businessman from Chicago who checked in late last night, but she still insists on baking. It is a point of pride. Bozeman’s is known for its baked goods, available to guests all day long. Today it’s a new recipe from Bon Appétit, Carrot-Zucchini Muffins with Pecan-Coconut Streusel. “He works for some development company,” her mother says as she slides a knife around each cup of the tin. “Bauder, his name is. They’re looking for a ski resort to invest in. He said they’re looking all over Vermont. Remodeling, a big advertising campaign, the works.”
She pushes one of the muffins towards Elizabeth. “Here, taste this. Tell me if it’s good.” The tips of her first two fingers dance against the countertop as Elizabeth breaks off a chunk and places it in her mouth. “Imagine what that would do for Clayton. For us. How many more people would come in.”
To Elizabeth the muffin tastes bitter, crumbling like wet sand. But she knows it’s just her. “Mmm,” she says, and smiles around the mouthful of mush. “Great recipe, Mom.”
Her mother takes the empty tin to the sink and Elizabeth, perched on a stool at the counter, spits into a napkin and balls it up in her fist. “We need something like that,” her mother is saying. “That kind of a boost. Your father was always saying so. If they decide to build up Pine Mountain – ” She stops and opens the pantry for plastic wrap, and while her back is turned Elizabeth slips a spoonful of cornstarch into her mouth.
The frills on her mother’s flowered apron wobble as she bundles Saran Wrap around each streuseled muffin. Elizabeth wants to reply but if she speaks a fine mist of starch will waft from her lips like a smoke signal. Instead she enjoys the softness of the dissolving starch, the delicate taste as she flattens the clumps against her palate.
“Let’s hope for the best,” her mother says finally. “He’s here until Friday. Let’s just show him the best side of Clayton. And Bozeman’s.” She turns. “Elizabeth, honey, you’re so quiet. Is something wrong?”
Elizabeth swallows the starch, now turned to slurry in her mouth.
“No.”
Her mother wipes her hands on her apron, a shred of plastic wrap clinging to her wrist. Then she turns back to the muffins and begins to place them into a ribboned wicker basket. “I just hate to see you looking so blue, honey,” she says. Then: “Is it a boy?”
Elizabeth says nothing, licks starch off the ridges of her teeth.
“No, Mom,” she says. “No, it isn’t a boy.”
* * *
Monday afternoons her mother tends the front garden, watering the marigolds, pulling crabgrass from around the sign that reads Bozeman’s: A Family Inn. She won’t change the name, even though for five years, since Elizabeth’s father died, it’s been just a family of two. “It’s better for business,” she always says.
Elizabeth goes for a run while her mother works. She jogs down into the town, where most of the kids from school live; she circles the high school itself, its parking lot empty, its fields dry and brown. On the way back she takes the long way, through the west side of Clayton, down the leafy street where she knows Jessica lives.
Last year, Jessica sat next to her in health class. When the teacher assigned them as project partners – alphabetically, Bozeman-Butler – Jessica didn’t complain about getting the new girl who’d just transferred up two grades. Like everyone else in class, Jessica is older, but she smiles at Elizabeth, and tells jokes that make everyone, even the teachers, laugh. Once Jessica lent her a purple pen and instead of taking notes on the four food groups, Elizabeth placed the chewed cap in her mouth, fitting her teeth into the grooves Jessica had made. Jessica is seventeen and will be going to college in a year. So will Elizabeth, but that fact does not seem real.
When she thinks of Jessica, this is what she remembers:
Last October, picture day. In the bathroom girls shadow eyelids and mascara lashes. Elizabeth stands pigeon-toed in the corner by the sinks, and Jessica turns to her and smiles.
“Forgot your makeup?” she says. “Here, use mine.” And she hands over a slim black tube of lipstick. Elizabeth has never done this before but she turns to the mirror, glides the stick across her lips, smudges the stain by pressing her lips together the way her mother does when she’s angry.
“Thanks,” she says and hands it back. In the mirror her reddened smile and Jessica’s are identical. She licks the corner of her lips and tastes dark summer plums.
But the pictures come out badly. In each shot her eyes are somewhere else – her lap, her hands, to the side of the frame, as if her attention lay just outside the picture, or as if she heard the footsteps of someone sensing something illicit. On the way home she rips the photos into shreds and places them, scrap by scrap, into her mouth, until the envelope is empty and the roof of her mouth is shriveled from the bitter developer.
The next week she’d slipped her hand into Jessica’s bag and palmed the lipstick. That evening, at home, she’d locked her door before sliding the tube from her jeans pocket. She lifted the lid, admired the smooth, perfectly angled tip of the stick, the sharp sliced-off edges where the makeup rose to a point. It was too beautiful, too sculpted to bite. She swiveled the base and watched the lipstick emerge and withdraw like a waxy red tongue.
Today, as she runs past the house, she looks for Jessica, but there’s no one there. Only a sprinkler on the front lawn, the fan of water waving back and forth, the edges of the spray rattling against the siding of the house, the grass a lush emerald.
When she comes home, her mother is sitting at the front desk with her head bent over the laptop screen. Elizabeth can’t see the yellow and blue of the spreadsheet, but she knows what her mother is looking at. It’s the thirtieth, and she’s totaling up the month’s earnings and expenditures, tapping a pencil along the row of numbers, the fingers of the other hand counting out the lines. Though she’s done this for the past five years, Elizabeth’s father was the one good with finances, and without him, the ledger grows unkempt. But lately there are fewer figures each month to total, and her mother’s shoulders bow like overweighted shelves as she adds and re-adds.
Elizabeth goes upstairs to change. Her room is at the top of the inn – the servant’s room before her parents bought and converted the mansion – but she likes its privacy, likes that she can look all the way down the curving road to the town spread out at the bottom of the hill like a map. It is the only room in the inn not decorated by her mother, the only room with no chintz and no antiques. The year before he died, Elizabeth’s father painted the walls pale blue for his daughter; standing on the stepladder, he painted stars on the sloped ceiling with glow-in-the-dark paint. She’s outgrown them now but leaves them up, because at night when she looks up to see the perfect five-pointed blotches, the comets in carefully tapering arcs, they remind her that she is no longer a child.
* * *
She doesn’t meet the businessman until the next day. In the afternoon, while her mother is at the supermarket, Elizabeth puts on nice clothes and sits at the table they call the reception desk. At school she wears dark colors: navy, charcoal, maroon. Dressed like that, it’s easier to blend with the sedate plastic chairs in the cafeteria, or the muted spines on the library shelves. But at reception her mother likes her to dress like she’s going to church, though they haven’t gone in years. She sits down in the Queen Anne armchair with a crossword puzzle book. Each time she fills in a word she tears a scrap from the answer pages and pops it into her mouth. The longer the word, the bigger the scrap. Niche earns a piece the size of her thumbnail; zwieback a piece the size of a cracker. She loves these afternoons, when no one is around and she can savor the chalky flavor.
At five she hears the town clock striking. Every day the bells play a different song, always painfully slow, but the tourists, when they are there, adore it. Today it’s the Beatles, “Hey Jude.” She reads “fleeting, transitory,” writes evanescent, tears a last strip of paper and nibbles its edges. Her mother will be home soon. She’s about to put it into her mouth endwise, like a piece of gum, when the businessman comes in. Elizabeth slides the paper between her fingers as he smiles, showing his teeth. He’s maybe forty, but not bad looking, clean-shaven and dark-haired. Even before he leans in close to say hello she can smell his cologne, musky and damp.
“You must be Elizabeth,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
When he speaks to her he stands so near that all she can see are the small things about him: the creases in the folds of his shirt; the pores on his cheek; how his hands are pale, like cheese. She has the urge to slide her chair backwards.
“You’re holding down the fort?” he says, sitting on the edge of the table and unwrapping a muffin from the basket. “I hear you’re going off to college soon.” When she doesn’t reply he asks, “Your mother runs this whole inn herself?”
She doesn’t like the way he eats the muffin, breaking pieces off and pressing them between his finger and thumb before pushing them between his lips. So she nods and says only, “Since my father died.” With the side of her hand she wipes the crumbs he’s made off the table.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he seems to mean it. She feels his eyes rest on her, heavy as marbles.
“Are you having a nice stay in Clayton?” she says.
“It’s a nice town,” he says. “Nice scenery. Nice people. Could do with more business. I bet you could, too.” She nods. “Well,” he says, “maybe we can do something about that.”
Elizabeth’s mother comes in with a bag of groceries in each hand.
“Oh, Mr. Bauder,” she says. “I see you’ve met Elizabeth. I hope she’s being helpful.”
“You have a very charming daughter, Mrs. Bozeman,” he says. “We were just talking about Clayton and whether we could get more people to your lovely town.” He stands up and gives her mother a smile, but this time his lips stay closed. “I’ve got to wash up before my dinner meeting. It was lovely meeting you, Elizabeth.”
He goes into the front hall and Elizabeth hears his footsteps on the stairs. Her mother takes the bags into the kitchen.
“Such a nice man,” she says. “Chicken for dinner, is that all right with you?”
Elizabeth waits until she hears the sizzle of oil in a hot pan before she uncurls the strip of crossword puzzle from her fingers. It holds its shape, like a fancy butter cookie. As she touches her tongue to it the businessman emerges from the front hall. She can’t remember being caught before, not even when she was a child, and with her thumb she thrusts the entire curl of paper into her mouth. But she can tell by the way he pauses in the doorway that he’s seen.
“Did I leave my pen?” he says. He scans the desk, then pats his pants pocket. “Ah. Here it is.” He smiles at her, too broadly. She tucks the paper behind her molar, the way she sometimes does in class, and tries to smile back. When he leaves she fishes it out and finds it has gone soft as oatmeal.
* * *
Wednesday morning she’d like to run again, but this is her mother’s busy day: farmer’s market and antique fair. Elizabeth puts on a skirt, a flowered blouse. It’s the kind of blouse Jessica might wear, and on impulse she takes Jessica’s lipstick from the back of the underwear drawer. She hasn’t used it much since taking it, so the tube is almost new. The maroon just matches the centers of flowers and she colors her lips carefully, outlining the edges with the tip before filling in the center with two broad swipes. She’s sitting at reception again when the businessman arrives in midafternoon.
“Here again?” he says. He unwraps today’s offering, double-chocolate-chunk cookies. “How come you’re not out with your boyfriend on a nice day like this?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“What? A girl as pretty as you with no boyfriend?” He swallows a bit of cookie and reaches across and squeezes her hand. “Don’t worry, Elizabeth. Do you want to hear my theory about boys?”
What she wants is to pull her hand back, but he’s holding it tight and when she tugs just a little he doesn’t loosen his grip. Instead she studies the guest register where his name is signed in green pen: Jack D. Bauder, Chicago, Illinois.
“Ever been to a party,” he says, “where there’s a bottle of soda sitting out on the table? That’s what girls are like. Everyone just mills around looking at that soda, but no one wants to open it. But once the bottle’s opened, everyone wants a cup. That’s what boys are like. Meet one and they’ll all come running.” He lets go of her hand, crumples the plastic wrap and sets it on the table. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, but she can’t make out if he’s smiling or serious.
“I’ve got another dinner meeting. Tell your mother her cookies are delicious.” He winks at her and leaves. When he’s gone Elizabeth rubs the back of her hand against her jeans. The ball of Saran Wrap slowly uncurls itself, its sound almost inaudible in the silent room.
* * *
At five-thirty, when her mother comes home with a shopping bag and a hurricane lamp, the businessman has left for his meeting. Elizabeth still hasn’t thrown away the plastic from his cookie and her mother says, “Elizabeth! What a mess you’ve made. What would our guest say if he came in?”
“He came in a little while ago,” Elizabeth says. “And then he went out again.”
“Oh?” her mother says, going into the kitchen. Elizabeth follows her and leans on the counter while her mother takes tomatoes and basil and a bunch of daisies out of the bag.
“Just look at these tomatoes,” her mother says. “Only four dollars for six. Did he say anything about the resort? Do you think they’re going to invest?” She picks up the lamp she’s bought and rubs at a speck on its base.
Elizabeth hesitates. “He didn’t say anything,” she says, and begins to shred the edge of the paper bag into pale brown fringe.
Her mother frowns. “I hope you were polite,” she says.
“Of course I was.” Elizabeth rips off two strips of bag and twists them around her fingertips. When she looks up, she’s surprised to see her mother watching.
“What are you doing there?”
“Nothing,” Elizabeth says. “Just playing around.” She smiles cautiously at her mother and the milk-colored lamp, slides the curls of paper down her fingers like rings.
“I thought the lamp would look good in the green room,” her mother says. She frowns again, then sets the lamp down and takes her wallet out of her purse.
“Why don’t you go into town tomorrow and buy yourself a magazine,” she says, putting a bill on the table. “Just a little something to cheer you up. You’ve been a big help to me this week.”
“Okay,” says Elizabeth. Under the edge of the counter, she pulls the brown paper from her hands and rolls it like a cigarette, and when her mother goes to put the lamp in its new place and the daisies in the businessman’s room, she places the twist between her teeth and chews. The taste, like wheat, flowers on her tongue.
* * *
The next afternoon she goes into town as her mother suggested. But instead of walking to the drugstore, she heads to the café. She’s not hungry, but her mother’s ten-dollar bill is tucked in her jeans pocket, and she knows Jessica works there in the summer.
It’s past lunch so the café is empty, and she sits by the window fingering the edges of the bill, resists the urge to smell it. She has never eaten money and wonders what it would be like. Crisp, she thinks, like lettuce, and probably salty from the grime of many palms. But she will not allow herself to try. This money, she thinks, is for normal use. And Jessica comes over, leans on Elizabeth’s table.
“Hey there,” she says. “Having a good summer? Nice blouse.” Elizabeth’s face goes warm, and all she can manage is “Thanks. Yeah. Can I have some ice cream?”
Jessica looks around. “My manager’s out. Tell you what, it’s on the house.” She goes into the kitchen and comes back with two frosted bowls, sits down across the table. “God, it’s hot. And it’s so dead around here. No one’s been in all day.”
Elizabeth watches her spoon rocky road into her mouth. Jessica isn’t wearing makeup today, and her lips are pale, only a little darker than her skin. Elizabeth says what she knows people always say. “How’s your summer been?”
Jessica makes a face. “Work, work, work. And my dad thinks I should be studying for the SAT already. It’s barely August.” She licks coffee-colored cream from her spoon and tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Your mom have anybody staying at the inn?”
“Just this weird guy,” Elizabeth says. “This businessman from Chicago who’s always trying to talk to me about boys.”
Jessica laughs. “Creepy,” she says. “What is it with old men like that? As if all we think about is boyfriends.” She scoops a chunk of chocolate and looks Elizabeth in the eye and smiles with one side of her mouth. “Boys. Who needs them, right?”
As they sit there together, Elizabeth wants to tell Jessica everything that has ever happened to her: how she broke her arm sailing from a swing in sixth grade; the way her hands shook when the teacher made them partners; how she feels like God lying awake when the inn is full, sensing the people sleeping beneath her floorboards. More: the crunch of the first piece of chalk she ever ate, in kindergarten; the delicate flavor of plaster, tangy as sourdough bread; the way paper wilts, then congeals, in your mouth. She wants to pour her whole life into Jessica’s ear; she wants to touch her tongue to Jessica’s cheek and taste the fine down that glistens there like powder. And she reaches out and takes Jessica’s hand.
Jessica’s fingers are cold and Elizabeth wipes a smudge of chocolate from one glassy red-lacquered nail. Then Jessica draws her hand away, quickly, and Elizabeth sees that her eyes are wide and unblinking and won’t meet hers.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Jessica says. She scoops up the bowls, one in each hand, and disappears into the kitchen. The kitchen door swings behind her, wildly at first and then less and less until Elizabeth isn’t sure if it’s still moving at all.
She leaves the whole ten-dollar bill on the table, even though she hasn’t even tasted the ice cream, as if in exchange for amnesia, or at least a willful forgetting.
* * *
The businessman doesn’t say anything when she comes into the sitting room, but he puts down the paper he’s reading. She knows he’s seen her face, her unlipsticked lips, the angry red smear where she’s wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. On the coffee table is a new flower arrangement, tulips from the garden: her mother’s afternoon occupation.
He’s brought her a box of chocolate cordials, gold-wrapped and ribboned. “As a thank-you,” he says. “For your hospitality. The job’s done – I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
She wants to tell him, “I don’t like chocolate.” Of course you do, she thinks. Everybody likes chocolate. The smell of the candy under her nose makes her dizzy. But he’s so eager, the box tilted towards her on his palm, his eyes trained on her face like lights, studying its curves and planes. Even without looking she can feel that gaze, the weight of it on her cheek, how anxious he is to please. She smiles at him, runs her fingers along the tops of the chocolates, traces the molded swirls as her eyes rise to meet his. Then she lifts a piece and places it, whole, into her mouth, where it sits unmelting on her tongue.
“See?” he says. “Isn’t it good?”
Her teeth break the shell of the candy and liquid, thick and choking, floods her mouth. Her throat burns, but she smiles as she swallows the whole mess without chewing again.
“Delicious,” she says, and wipes the sticky syrup from the corner of her lips.
“You know what I could really go for?” he asks. He leans against the table, his hand almost touching hers. “A cup of coffee.”
Elizabeth knows that the coffee pot is empty, that her mother has just gone out and won’t be back until dinner. She looks up at him, puts her hand atop his and says, “I’ll bring it up to your room.”
From TV, and movies, she has an idea of what comes next. So she is not surprised when, as she sets the cup and plate on the desk, he guides her to sit on the corner of the bed and rubs her shoulders. She is not surprised as he strokes her hair, coaxes off her clothes. And she lets him. What she does not expect is the awkwardness of her body, which does not know how to bend, and the heaviness of his hands on her skin. And the taste of him: damp and sharp, like meat gone just sour. But she keeps her eyes open, banishing thoughts of soft, cold palms. She smiles as he hovers above her, as if this is what she truly wants.
Afterwards, he lies on his back with his eyes closed, half-covered by the sheet. She touches her toes to the wood floor and begins to pull on her clothes. When she is finished she turns around to find him watching her.
“You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asks.
“Yes.” There is a long silence as she pulls the laces of her tennis shoes tight. “You’re a good kid, you know that?” he says at last.
And because there is nothing else to say to this: “Yeah,” she says, “I know.”
She stays in her own room the rest of the day, telling her mother she isn’t hungry at dinner, feigning sleep when her mother comes to check on her before bed. Lying in the dark, studying the stars that still glow faintly on the peaked ceiling above, she feels like she’s under water.
* * *
Friday morning she sleeps late and when she wakes it’s noon and he’s checked out, gone.
“Elizabeth,” her mother says when she comes downstairs. “What’s the matter with you? Were you going to sleep all day?”
When she goes to clean his room, she locks the door. She ties back the curtains and peels the bedspread back. She doesn’t know what she expects to see. Blood, maybe, like in the books she’s read. Or something subtler, imprints of their bodies pressed into the linen, some marker of what had happened there. But the sheets are still the same off-white as always, barely even wrinkled.
Elizabeth strips the sheets from the bed and the cases from the pillows, bundling them in her arms. As she lifts them she thinks she smells him deep in the weave of the fabric: part cologne, part sweat. But when she sniffs again, the smell is gone, and she tosses the sheets into the laundry basket and begins to sweep. As she pushes the chair back into place she notices a business card fallen to the floor, almost hidden behind the desk leg.
It’s thick and almost coarse, a pale creamy gold and crisp at the corners. At the top are the logo and address of a company, and beneath, his name and a phone number in glossy black lettering. She pivots the card between her fingers, watching his name flick in and out of view like an old movie: Jack D. Bauder. Jack D. Bauder.
She rips off a corner, leaving the lettering intact, and places it into her mouth.
The paper is tender, almost melting on her tongue, tasting of the dry heat of summer and the sour of lemonade. Fantasies hover like spiderwebs in the morning light. She imagines catching a train to Chicago, beginning a new life at the green address in the register. A life where chalk was for writing, paper for writing on, plaster for building walls on which to hang photographs of herself and the businessman, or a man just like him. A life where she would never slide magazine pages up her sleeve or lick dust from her fingers, where she would eat ice cream without remembering red-lacquered nails and eyes that slid away, where she would sit at a table and eat cornflakes in milk and would not think, as the cereal softened, of cardboard grown tender in the rain.
Then, almost before she knows it, she has eaten the whole card, and there is nothing but sunlight in her hands.
Celeste Ng’s fiction has appeared in One Story, Crazyhorse, and TriQuarterly.