On Home Read online

  Back at her desk, Cassidy went to her settings. She’d set her counts low to draw people in: 50 tokens for a boob flash, 100 for her pussy, 250 to cum. As she hit the button to start the countdown to broadcast, she remembered her first show.

  Ten seconds to go. She’d been so sick of driving drunk bros home from bad bars.

  Eight seconds. She’d felt so nervous, but she told herself she was just trying it out. She didn’t even have to take off her clothes.

  Six seconds. What if no one even wanted to see her naked? she’d worried. What if everyone at home had been right? Maybe she was disgusting.

  She had begun shaking at three seconds. It had to be better than rideshare driving, she’d told herself, and it was definitely better than going back to Buckhannon broke. But was she really going to do this?

  When the pink button had announced she was live and Cassidy stared at her own image under the banner reading NEW GIRL!, her hesitation vanished. Viewers had poured in and so had the tips. The chat rolled by faster than she could read it and before she knew it, she was naked, giggling, and wondering where the gorgeous girl on-screen with the rosy cheeks and the easy smile had come from. Cassidy liked this version of herself. And she liked how much other people liked her. She’d made several hundred dollars that night. As soon as it hit her account, she spent it on an external mic and a vibrator that buzzed automatically when she got a tip. She’d sold her car to fund an even better setup and never looked back.

  The counter before her now reached zero and she was live again. She’d stopped getting nervous weeks ago. Cassidy plastered a smile on her face, already hearing her signature hiiii-iii in her mind, like a doorbell. No one was in her room. Cassidy held her smile, her cheeks starting to shake. One viewer entered, then left, then another came in and another. Cassidy asked the room how they were doing that night, what they were up to, what they wanted to see. “I’ll give you a freebie this Friday,” she teased, removing the straps of her bodysuit, letting her cone-shaped breasts emerge. “A little gift.” Two viewers joined and then left, and Cassidy tried not to let her panic show as she absentmindedly played with her nipples, peeking at the other online girls’ viewer counts. A few more people joined her room and Cassidy continued rubbing her breasts, occasionally emitting an unconvincing moan. GreenKnobMO tipped 20 tokens and then left. Off nights were normal, she thought, looking toward the self-care guide. They had nothing to do with her talent and especially not with her self-worth. Cassidy rubbed more vigorously and outside, a coyote howled from the foothills. “Anyone want to chat? I love privates,” she said, but no one responded. In another tab, MannyBoy27’s profile still showed him as offline. Cassidy sat alone in the glow of the ring light, the illuminated circle visible in her pupils on-screen, the lace of her old lingerie pilling in tiny balls she would later snip off with nail clippers, massaging her breasts for four quiet strangers.

  Jane

  “Would you like some lotion, Jane?” the health aide offered with a patronizing grin, as if Jane were a child, incapable of moisturizing her own hands.

  “No, thank you.” The aide left and Jane reached for the bottle of Olay, pumping some into her palm. It was the cold air from the damned air conditioner. Her skin had never been so dry. What had the ointment been at G.O. Young Drug Store that day?

  Ah, right. Palmer’s Skin Success ointment, Relieves the IRRITATION of ITCHING, ECZEMA, and PIMPLES externally caused! She could still hear the advertisement in old Mr. Young’s voice as he’d tried to sell it to them. And they said Jane’s memory was bad.

  Jane and her cousin Ding had peered down through the glass countertops as they slurped their Coca-Colas.

  “Too bad it’s not ice cream,” Ding said. “Now that’s a cream I could use.”

  The girls licked the last drops from their straws and swung their stools to the side and, with a swish, scurried out to the street.

  “Maybe I should try that skin ointment,” Ding mused, pausing to stare back over her shoulder.

  “Ding, you don’t have eczema, and I don’t think you’d know a pimple if it bit you on the nose.”

  “But sometimes I have itching.”

  Jane kept walking and, after a last longing glance toward Young’s, Ding rushed to catch up. Grabbing Jane’s hand, she skipped next door to Thompson’s, pulling Jane behind her.

  Inside, bottles and boxes of all sizes lined the shelves, containing tablets, salves, powders, nose drops, and creams—anything you might need for any number of ailments or maladies. Jane took her time browsing, breathing in the scent of newness.

  Ding, on the other hand, stormed to the register, where John Hinkle counted nickels, oblivious to her predatory gaze.

  John had another year to go at the high school, though he looked older. He also had his pick of local girls from fifteen to twenty, all eager for the attention of one of the only eligible boys around.

  Ding plopped a pack of bubble gum on the counter and pretended, as always, that paying was an act of generosity, rather than an excuse to bat her eyelashes at John.

  “How’s school?” she asked him, her lips curling upward in a coy smile.

  “Just school,” he said, smiling back politely. He took the coin from her palm, placed it in the register, and turned to count jars of aspirin on a shelf.

  Ding left her hand stretched toward him for a moment, as if he might turn back around and grab it. When John failed to realize his mistake, Ding snatched the bubble gum, shoved it into Jane’s hand, and huffed out of the shop.

  Jane followed, and outside, the girls leaned against the building, staring down the street toward the courthouse, hoping against hope that something interesting might emerge. Jane opened the gum and handed a piece to her cousin, who tossed it into the air and caught it between her teeth.

  “Bravo, Miss Victory,” Jane said. Ding put a hand to her hip and saluted with the other, lifting her chest like the blond comic book hero. Jane’s cousin may have been prone to mood swings, but at least it was simple to lift her spirits.

  A baby-blue car approached and for a moment Jane imagined herself chasing it down, rapping on the window, beseeching its driver to take her wherever they were headed—anywhere but this boring little town. Instead she watched as the car rolled by. She opened the bubble gum pack again to pluck out her own piece and an ad fluttered to the ground. Jane bent to retrieve it from the sidewalk.

  On the small paper was a picture of a woman seated at a typewriter. Like Miss Victory, the woman’s hand was raised in a salute, and a perfect white smile spanned her face. Victory Waits on Your Fingers—Keep ’Em Flying, Miss U.S.A., the ad proclaimed. Smaller text below read, Uncle Sam needs stenographers! Get civil service information at your local post office. U.S. Civil Service Commission, Washington, D.C.

  Jane had seen the ads for WAVES and for WAC, for SPARS and the Cadet Nurses—all the opportunities for girls to join the war effort—but none of them had struck her like this. The letters her brothers had mailed home from boot camp had left her with little desire to join the service, and she had no interest in wearing a uniform, even if the WAVES did get a Mainbocher hat. She’d heard about the Government Girls, too, had seen The More the Merrier with Ding the week it came out, but somehow, until this exact moment, it had seemed like something separate from her and from Buckhannon—a far-off dream for people much more glamorous, from much more cosmopolitan places.

  Now, though, she blinked, imagining . . . living on her own in Washington—now that would be an adventure!

  “Take a look at this!” Jane said, shoving the ad in Ding’s face.

  Ding’s eyes crossed, trying to make sense of the tiny letters, and she mouthed the words under her breath as she read.

  Not a second passed before she grabbed Jane’s hand. “Let’s go!” she said, pulling her right across the middle of the street. She didn’t slow down the whole two blocks to the post office.

/>   The girls got back to Young’s just as Philip’s truck arrived. “Keep your mouth shut for now,” Jane said. She needed a chance to look over the pamphlets, to figure out how to present it to her daddy so that he could do the work of convincing her mother. Ding drew her fingers across her lips in a zipping motion.

  The three rode back to the country in a buzzing silence, Ding squeezing Jane’s leg. The truck’s engine hummed as they drove, and their shoulders bumped at each pothole, Philip’s strong and firm on Jane’s left, and on her right, Ding’s, small and bony.

  At Ding’s, Jane’s cousin hopped down from the truck and blew them both a kiss. “Thanks for the ride, Uncle Philip. I know you love me.”

  “I feel something about you, Christine. That’s for sure.”

  “You know there ain’t no one but you who still calls me that.”

  “That don’t bother me none. You’ll always be Christine to me.”

  Ding stuck out her tongue and slammed the truck door. As Philip turned his head to back down the steep driveway, Jane craned her neck to catch her cousin’s eye. Ding winked and again made like she was zipping up her lips.

  That night, Jane pulled her quilt tight around her shoulders. From the table beside her, an oil lamp illuminated the papers spread before her on the bed. She sat, studying them closely, her legs crossed in her cotton shortie pajamas. She would emphasize the service part of it all, she decided. She would go to Washington to do her patriotic duty. Certainly her parents couldn’t argue with that.

  Would it have been better if they had forbid it? Surely not, Jane told herself now, absentmindedly rubbing the lotion into the backs of her hands. If she hadn’t gone to Washington, she would not have Ken or Cassidy. And yet—

  “Would you like to come to Bible study?” Another aide had poked her head into the room, and Jane’s thoughts vanished, gone as if she had never been thinking them.

  “No,” she said, turning her chair toward the window and the empty field beyond.

  Cassidy

  Cassidy heard a buzzing sound, and for a moment her heart leapt at the promise of another tip, her dopamine receptors pinging, until she realized she hadn’t felt the vibration in her vagina. It was only her phone, rumbling from within her bag by the door. Cassidy sighed and ended her broadcast, not bothering to say goodbye to the four freeloaders watching her sad show. It was her parents again, as she figured. Cassidy threw her T-shirt on, leaving her lingerie dangling around her waist, and answered the video call.

  “It’s working.”

  “No, it isn’t. I can’t see anything yet.” Her parents were arguing, of course.

  “It says it’s working.”

  “Do you see anything?”

  “Give it a minute.”

  “Mom? Daddy? I’m here,” Cassidy said, louder than necessary.

  “Oh! I can see you!” Cassidy’s father, Ken, exclaimed as his face came into view. His curly hair was graying, more than Cassidy remembered from their last visit, but his face was animated and boyish as always. “This is the next best thing to having you here with me. How are you, sweet pea?”

  “I’m fine.” Cassidy smoothed her hair as she looked at her own face on the phone. Her screen was cracked and the fracture divided her left and right halves.

  “Are you wearing makeup?” Her mom leaned into the camera’s view. “I hate when you wear makeup. You’re so naturally beautiful. Why would you cover your face with that junk?”

  “What’s up, Daddy? How are you?”

  A message from MannyBoy27 appeared in Cassidy’s notification bar, and she was momentarily distracted. He was alive, at least.

  “Grandma Jane . . .”

  Cass’s attention shot back to her father. Ken’s broad grin had fallen. No. No. No. No. The word sounded in her head like a car alarm.

  And then, to her horror, Cassidy’s mind began planning what she would post on social media—what picture, what touching tribute. There was the song from Ingrid Michaelson. She would post it subtly, not make a big deal. If she mentioned it on her show, she would probably drum up a bunch of sympathy tips.

  “. . .was diagnosed with dementia,” Ken finished.

  Fuck, Cassidy thought. She was a fucking monster. The fluorescent light from the kitchen thrummed its yellow song and she felt certain her parents could see her bare ass poking through her lingerie, though it wasn’t on-screen.

  “What does that mean for her?” She tugged her T-shirt down. Her grandma was fine; that was the most important thing. Her grandma was alive. She thought of Grandma Jane and her heart-shaped face, the stories she told about the farm before Cassidy was born—how it used to teem with siblings and cousins and pigs and chickens, how her own mom made dresses from feed sacks, curtains from dresses, and babies out of thin air. How her father, as a boy, would roam it in search of arrowheads while she followed behind plucking four-leaf clovers and remembering her own childhood. She’d usually end up singing then—an old hymn sometimes, or others, a parable tune about a grasshopper and an ant.

  Ken took a heavy breath. “She’s coherent most of the time. You wouldn’t notice anything hugely different. We only got her evaluated because—”

  A wave of relief washed over Cassidy and carried her mind back to her whale of a tipper. She should tell him about it privately, before she said anything on the show. He’d be genuinely concerned, wonder what he could do to help.

  “Are you listening to your father?” Cassidy’s mother’s voice cut into her thoughts. “You should come home and see her before . . .” She trailed off.

  “Before what?”

  “Before it does become apparent. The doctor said she might decline rapidly.” Cassidy looked from her mom, stoic and annoyed, to her dad, whose eyes were watering, and said nothing. She really was a monster, but there was still no way she was going back to Buckhannon unless it was absolutely necessary.

  “What are you doing out there that you couldn’t do here?” her mom asked.

  Her dad’s voice was softer. “We miss you, Cass. I miss you.”

  Cassidy rolled her eyes.

  “Really, Cassidy?” her mom asked.

  “Paloma, can you give us a minute?” Cassidy’s mom rolled her own eyes and walked away, leaving Ken alone on the screen.

  “Just a short trip,” he said. “So you can say goodbye while she’s still lucid.”

  “I couldn’t do that.” Cassidy’s eyes watered. “There’s too much pressure. It’d be worse than not knowing. Grandma Jane doesn’t want me there. She knows how much I hate Buckhannon.”

  Ken tilted his head. “This is Grandma Jane. The Grandma Jane who taught you how to sew, who rocked you to sleep when Mom and I were too exhausted.”

  “I know.”

  “This is my mother.” Ken’s voice rose and cracked a little with the last word and Cassidy had to look away.

  “I know,” she said again.

  “It’s hard, but don’t think of it as goodbye goodbye. Nothing ever really goes away.”

  “Daddy, please don’t talk to me about reincarnation right now.” She clicked over to MannyBoy27’s messages, ready to fabricate an excuse to hang up with her parents so she could cry. All of it—the slow, lonely night, this news—it was getting to her. She could say she had a ride request.

  “It’s not the woo you think it is,” Ken said. He puffed out his cheeks and then blew the air from his mouth. “Say you’re buried and you eventually decompose and become part of the dirt around you. A seed falls and grows in the dirt you’re part of, right?”

  “Right.” Cassidy rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  “So maybe a little tree grows and a deer comes by and eats some of the leaves. A hunter kills the deer and brings it home to his family. Maybe his wife is pregnant, yada yada yada.”

  They both laughed at the Seinfeld reference and the air pressure in Cass
idy’s room seemed to lighten.

  “That’s all a really physical version of reincarnation. The matter is literally being transferred.”

  “I can buy that, but—”

  “But why is it so radical to think consciousness, or parts of it, get transferred too—become part of that tree or that deer or that baby?”

  “Hm.”

  “Even if not, though, there are other ways consciousness goes on. Part of me is in you. Part of Grandma Jane, too.”

  “Okay,” Cassidy said.

  “Just come home,” Ken said. “Please.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  They hung up and Cassidy took her phone to bed, tucking it under her arm like a teddy bear as she fell asleep in her T-shirt and lace, her room small and dark as a cave.

  Cassidy

  SecreC: Hey . . .

  MannyBoy27: Hey babygirl

  Cassidy smiled. She kind of loved when he called her pet names. She’d rolled out of bed and shimmied out of her lingerie bottoms, replaced them with a pair of red vinyl booty shorts, and gotten set up to cam. She was planning to tell her room about her grandma, but she wanted to tell Manny first.

  SecreC: I just talked to my parents . . . got some bad news about my grandma

  MannyBoy27: O no. What’s up?

  SecreC: She has dementia

  Cassidy paused and bit her lip, considering the balancing act. With some fans, directness was the best approach, but Manny liked to feel like he was doing favors for a friend. A notification told Cassidy that Manny was attempting to video-call her. She accepted and put on her best vulnerable sexy face.

  “Are you okay?” Manny asked once they were connected. He was in the same plaid shirt he wore in his profile picture, and behind him, Cassidy could see the large floor-to-ceiling window beyond his desk.