Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh Page B

the dog’s dish of stale and smelly kibble, he simply said, “Damn dog,” and so I threw the whole thing out, and told no one. A few days later my motherwas dead, and I let the tears flow openly at last. 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.
    Looking out over the icy backyard that night, I cried again for my dog, sorry that she would have to stay there in X-ville for all of eternity. I considered digging up her bones so I could take her with me. I really considered putting on my ski pants, a heavy wool sweater, snow boots, mittens, the tight knit cap, and going out there with a shovel. I hadn’t marked the grave with anything, but I felt that Mona would call to me, that I would intuitively know where to break ground. Of course I didn’t even try. I’d have needed some kind of pickax, the kind they use in graveyards. Imagine the labor necessary to bury a whole person without a machine to do the digging. It’s not like in the movies. It’s not that easy. How did they bury people in the winter in the old days, I wondered. Did they leave the bodies out to freeze until the spring? If they did do that, they must have kept them somewhere safe, in the basement perhaps, to lie in silence in the dark and cold until the thaw.

MONDAY
    I remember the shower I took that morning because the hot water ran out while I dillydallied at the mirror inspecting my naked body through the wafting steam. I’m an old lady now. Like it does to everyone, time has blurred my face with lines and sagging jowls and bulging bags under my eyes, and my old body’s been rendered nearly sexless and soft and wrinkled and shapeless. So just for laughs, here I am again, my little virginal body at age twenty-four. My shoulders were small and sloped and knobbly. My chest was rigid, a taut drum of bones I thudded with my fist like an ape. My breasts were lemon-size and hard and my nipples were sharp, like thorns. But I was really just all ribs, and so thin that my hips jutted out awkwardly and were often bruised from bumping into things. My guts were still cramped from the ice cream and eggs from the day before. The sluggishness of my bowels was a constant preoccupation. There was a complex science to eating and evacuating, balancingthe rising intensity of my constipated discomfort with the catharsis of my laxative-induced purges. I took such poor care of myself. I knew I should drink water, eat healthful foods, but I really didn’t like to drink water or eat healthful foods. I found fruits and vegetables detestable, like eating a bar of soap or a candle. I also suffered from that unfortunate maladjustment to puberty—still at twenty-four—that made me ashamed of my womanliness. There were days on end I ate very little—a handful of nuts or raisins here, a crust of bread there. And for fun, such as with the chocolates a few nights prior, I sometimes chewed but spat out candies or cookies, anything that tasted good but which I feared might put meat on my bones.
    Back then, at twenty-four, people already considered me a spinster. I’d had only one kiss from a boy by then. When I was sixteen, Peter Woodman, a senior, took me to the high school prom. I won’t say too much about him—I don’t want to sound as though I’ve carried the memory around with any romantic nostalgia. If there’s anything I’ve learned to detest, it is nostalgia. And anyway, Randy is the romantic lead in my story, if there is one. Peter Woodman can’t hold a candle to him. My prom dress was very pretty, though—navy taffeta. 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. We spent most of our time sitting at a table in the darkened gymnasium, Peter talking to his friends. His father