It was easy to see now that she was being manipulated, but at the time she felt—well, tortured. At night, she began covering the gap under the door with a blanket, like she had as a child. It didn’t seem like enough, though, so she often moved a few pieces of furniture against the door, just as she had back home, in the months leading up to her mother’s suicide.
But Petra knew all about Greta’s blanket and barricade. “When you accept Jesus for your personal savior, you never need blanket again,” Petra promised. “The Lord was your blanket.”
By the time Aunt Deb came to visit at the end of July, Greta was attending church twice a week and praying with her hands in the air. Aunt Deb pulled Greta aside and asked what the hell was going on, and why was she so happy?
“I’ve been saved,” Greta whispered. “I’m born again.”
“No, you’re not,” Deb said, and laughed. “Go pack your bags and get in the car. Now.”
Greta just stood there, frozen.
“Chop-chop,” Deb said.
“Where do you live again?” Greta said.
“The ‘Live Free or Die’ state,” Deb said.
“Hawaii?” Greta asked hopefully.
“New Hampshire!” Deb said. “Hurry up, our flight leaves in five hours.”
While she packed, Greta listened to Deb argue with Petra and Derek in the living room.
“I told you two not to pull this shit,” Deb said.
“She was lost,” Petra said.
“She’s just a kid. Her mother’s dead. We were all there to clean up the mess. Where were you? You couldn’t even pick up the phone.”
Petra mumbled something about a miscarriage. Deb said she liked Petra better before, when she rode a motorcycle and smoked weed.
“New Hampsha,” Stacy interrupted at last. “I had a feelin you’d lived in New England. Did you fit in or were you a weido?”
“It was an adjustment,” Greta said.
In New Hampshire, Deb treated Greta like a refugee from a war-torn state. Greta had fled her homeland with only a suitcase, and now she was straddling two cultures. It seemed important to Deb that Greta completely abandon her old life.
“What the hell are you reading?” Deb asked one day.
“Um, the Bible?”
“That’s not the Bible,” Deb said, shaking her head.
“It’s the Jesus parts,” Greta explained. “That’s why it’s called The Word.”
Deb threw the book in the garbage. “I’ve got some words for you: wake up!” She clapped her hands in Greta’s face. “You were brainwashed by dipshits, Greta. It wasn’t your fault, but you need to wake up now. Are you awake?”
Greta shrugged. “I guess.”
One Sunday, when Greta asked Deb to take her to church, Deb dropped her off at the recessed entrance of one of the oldest buildings in town, a giant stone structure with a bunch of stained glass windows and a huge cylindrical tower.
“I’m not Catholic,” Greta said.
“Go check it out,” Deb said. “I’ll be back in two hours.”
It was Greta’s first time inside a public library. This one had been built in 1860, apparently, and contained four hundred thousand books, which seemed excessive. On the main floor, Greta avoided the reading room and headed for the stacks, located in the tower. She selected three novels and carried them to the front desk, where they asked for her library card. When she admitted that she didn’t have one, they gave her a form to fill out. Greta went back to the tower, tossed the books out the window, and watched them land safely in the bushes. Then she descended the stairs, retrieved the books, and waited for Deb on a patch of lawn.
“I continued stealing books for a whole year,” Greta told Stacy. “I hid them in my closet, under my bed, and eventually in the attic. My room essentially became another branch of the library. When Deb finally figured out what I was up to, she made me return the books and go to therapy.”
“For how long?” Stacy asked.
“Four years,” Greta said.
“You seem cured,” Stacy said. “In fact, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I’m surprised you’re not married.”
She told him about her last boyfriend. He’d had money, a new experience for Greta, but zero upper-body strength. He could barely hold himself on top of her, and when he did, she felt like she was being made love to by a large, trembling finger. They were together two years.
“Was he in a nursing home?” Stacy asked.
“He was my age,” Greta said.
“Who ended it?”
“I did,” Greta said. “He decided he wanted a family.”
“Gross,” Stacy said.
“I’m guessing you never had children,” Greta said.
“No, I have two,” Stacy said. “I only see them once a year.”
Dad??? Greta thought hysterically.
Stacy laughed. “I’m kidding—no kids for me, not eva, I hope you’re okay with that.”
Music to her ears.
* * *
SIX WEEKS LATER, they were living together in Stacy’s blue-and-white house. Since Stacy was the caretaking type, Greta experienced a second childhood. Or, in her case, a first childhood. Stacy fed her compliments and saucy things from the slow cooker. He took care of the bills, put her through two years of college, helped repair her terrible credit. He guided and protected her. He got her out of the restaurant, eventually, and into the pharmacy, but encouraged her creativity above all. She’d never felt so cherished, nourished, pacified, and… sleepy. In fact, she felt distinctly as though she were sleepwalking, or in a perpetual state of daydreaming, and yet they managed to do things like have sex and travel abroad. Stacy took cooking classes; Greta attended meditation retreats. Stacy made Korean food; Greta took long, even breaths through her nose. Mouth-breathing was only for emergencies, she’d learned, but there were never any emergencies with Stacy because he took care of everything.
“Ever hear of RealDolls?” Stacy asked over dinner one night. “The realistic sex dolls made of silicone?”
Fuck, Greta thought. He’s been lulling me into a trance for a year, and now the terrible truth is about to come out.
“Lemme guess,” Greta said. “You want one for your birthday.”
“They cost six grand,” he said, and laughed. “And no, I’d rather have a RealDog.”
Greta pictured a silicone sex doll in her golden years. Wrinkles, flab, sun damage. She could see how there might be a huge market for that, given everyone’s obsession with youth and perfection.
“So, like, older sex dolls?”
“Dogs, Greta,” he said. “Life-size dogs made of silicone.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, we could take a RealDog on road trips. We could hang out with a RealDog on the couch. We could take naps with a RealDog—”
“But why not get a real dog?”
“Because you’d never look at me again,” Stacy said seriously. “And I’m not sure I could handle that.”
“I love dogs,” Greta said. “But I’m not the dog-mom type. I don’t think of dogs as fur babies.”