The Cut

For three days Sadie found excuses to skip Izzy’s bath and her own showers, braiding her hair to obscure when it looked greasy. By the fourth day she couldn’t stand it anymore. The sliding things she’d seen had not been in the tub, after all, but the hallway. And they’d been leaving L’Arpin, not coming in. And she didn’t even know what they were. She had heard no new strange noises from the tub, seen nothing out of place anywhere in the hotel. Maybe the strangeness, if it had ever existed, had passed.
Anyway, Izzy missed bath time—splashing more than hair washing—and Sadie had finally gotten herself together enough to make a prenatal care appointment. The nearest Planned Parenthood performed appointments and tests with payment plans even she could afford.
The receptionist signed her in, then put a privacy sticker over her name. Sadie led Izzy into an empty waiting room with frosted privacy windows. The focus on anonymity might have comforted Sadie despite having no need to hide from Sam here, but knowing its purpose—to protect women who were making their own best choices from people who had no business judging them—made her a little sad instead, and a little angry. She tried to shake the mood off, pulling a board book from her purse to read to Izzy until her turn to be seen came.
The easy normality of talking through her first prenatal appointment left Sadie with a breathless, squeezing ache in her chest. All healthy, all normal. She hoped Izzy wouldn’t remember anything about the visit and talk about it to Gertie in a way that might accidentally give away where they’d been. A distraction would help. Sadie had no money to spare, but a single small hot chocolate from the gas station on the way back to the hotel wouldn’t break them.
Following the clinical bright lights and sterile walls of the Planned Parenthood, and the gas station with its perfectly normal layer of grime and all the modern conveniences, returning to the dingy green halls, anachronistic huge keys, and gloomy dim shadows of L’Arpin made Sadie tired and wary the moment she stepped into the lobby.
That wound-up fatigue followed Sadie through the gray days of November, through the burst of activity that struck L’Arpin over Thanksgiving. Though none of the many guests who checked in during the holiday bustle vanished mysteriously, the last camera incident still worried Sadie.
She knew how to shove her unease to the back of her thoughts and keep it hidden, though, so Mel’s aloofness evaporated and Sadie built a congenial friendship with both her and Joe. A festive mood lightened Gertie’s judgmental side, and the guests kept Mr. Drye too busy to pay too much mind to Sadie. If she had not been suffering morning sickness and a lurch in her heart at every missed call from Sam, if she had not been stretching stolen time in the free room for as long as she could, Sadie might even have begun to feel secure.
Before her shift a week after Thanksgiving, she left Izzy watching tv and stepped into the hot shower. Steam hung thick in the bathroom in spite of the whirring of the ventilation fan, condensation already beading on the unpleasant wallpaper and fogging the huge mirror. Sadie never liked stepping into the wet heat of a bathroom after someone else’s shower, the sensation at once making her feel invasive and invaded. Breathing the hot, damp air of her own shower, however, she loved. It made her feel warm and clean through and through. She tipped her head so the hot water sluiced through her hair to run down her back, and inhaled deeply. Tension she didn’t always remember she carried in her shoulders eased, and she sighed.
If the whole world were like a hot bath, how nice that would be. Lathering her hair with the hotel shampoo added a faint floral scent to the steam, not unpleasant but not quite right. With her next breath she wished she could smell something richer in the wet air, something salty and strident and pure. The steam coated the inside of her nose, her mouth. Her throat. She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and closed her eyes and imagined an ocean. In spite of the heat, Sadie felt a cool touch of unease shiver down her back. The image stuck in her head like a tune she couldn’t shake. An ocean stretching beneath a misty sky, warm although the sun never broke through that thick cloud cover.
Sadie snapped her eyes open and tried to shake off the way her belly twisted. She’d heard of pregnancy causing vivid dreams, but never strange daydreams. It unsettled her. She almost felt she could hear the rise and fall of that ocean. But when she listened harder, the soft sound of the shower pattering down into the water mixed with the spray and the fan, and she heard nothing else.
Without closing her eyes again, she reached for the conditioner. Having her eyes open didn’t really matter, though. Not when she could still taste the spray from that ocean she’d pictured. Not when she could still see the way its surface glittered in spite of the diffuse light, the way the clouds themselves seemed almost to gleam.
Letting the conditioner sit in her hair, Sadie soaped the rough hotel washcloth and scrubbed in a hurry. The steam seemed suddenly oppressive rather than comforting. As if it tainted, not cleansed. She wondered what rippled through that ocean…
Forcing herself to slow so she wouldn’t slip, she raised her legs one after the other, lifting her feet out of the water to wash them. Soon her pregnancy would make such maneuvers difficult, but not yet. The label on the hotel’s little bar of soap had said lavender, but Sadie smelled brine and fresh breezes.
She’d heard of women craving dish soap or unused kitty litter in the throes of pregnancy, and she’d heard of scent-revulsion. But why did she want this sea-smell so badly?
A gentle touch stroked her calf. Sadie gasped and straightened out of her relaxed slouch, dropping her washcloth with a splash. The movement shook loose a small glob of conditioner that slid down her forehead. Sadie squeezed her eyes shut against the ensuing sting. Unseeing, she stepped forward through shin-deep water. “Izzy,” she scolded, rubbing her eyes. “How many times has Mommy told you not to sneak in while I’m showering?”
Clearing her sight, Sadie turned, expecting to see her daughter wearing her trouble-grin, peering around the curtain at her, one hand holding the plastic back and one reaching out to stroke her again.
The dropped washcloth brushed her toes. Sadie did not find Izzy invading her quiet time in the shower.
When had the water risen so high? Had she unknowingly plugged the drain?
Something stroked her ankle.
Sadie looked down, and screamed.
Tiny tentacled things swam in the water.
One wrapped itself around her ankle and another bumbled over her toes. The touch on her calf remained, a little thing with too many squirmy legs climbing slowly up her skin. Sadie screamed again and swatted at it. It came free from her leg but clung for one instant to her fingers.
“Yeeuugh!” Sadie’s voice wavered, her lips pulled back in disgust. She shook her hand hard and the little thing flew off, splashing into the water.
“Mommy?” Izzy’s voice carried strident alarm.
“Stay out of here, Iz!” Sadie said, tearing the curtain aside as she flailed out of the tub. Two more of the things got hold of her wash cloth, twisting and twining around it.
“Mommy?” Izzy appeared in the doorway.
Another crawled up from the drain.
“I said stay out, Isabelle Miles!” Sadie shouted, voice rough and loud. Izzy burst into immediate, screaming tears.
Sadie ignored her. She fumbled for the knob and shut the shower off. The surface of the water rolled back and forth from her hasty exit. Under the water the tentacled things bobbed back and forth as well.
“Mommy, you said no to me!” Izzy wailed, face furious, voice full of accusation.
“Yeah, I said no to you. Back up, Isabelle. Mommy said back up.” Sadie reached for Izzy with the hand that had not swatted the thing away, and she gently pushed her daughter further from the bathroom door. Izzy let out a wordless, heinous shriek at this and ran to the couch, where she threw herself facedown and howled into the cushions, kicking her feet.
Sadie let her go. She lurched to the bathroom sink and stopped with her fingers trembling a hair’s breadth from the handles. No slime or strange sensations marked where she’d been touched by the things. She wanted to scrub herself in scalding water nonetheless.
But what if she turned on the faucet and more of those things wriggled out?
Forget washing, Sadie had to dress, had to call someone. L’Arpin had some terrible infestation.
Oh—oh—where else were these things? The guests—!
Sadie yanked a bathrobe on and scrambled past a still-tantruming Izzy to snatch up the room phone. Just before she dialed the front desk, she paused. She’d never called down like that from this room. Didn’t want to remind Mr. Drye that she had only officially been given this room for a week.
The horrible creatures swarming her tub couldn’t be ignored.
But they would have to wait just as long as it took Sadie to run downstairs in person.
She dressed as fast as she could, her clothing clinging to her wet skin and slowing her. Izzy’s screaming had settled down into monotonous and repetitive fake crying, and Sadie had no problem ignoring that. She picked her daughter up and all but slung the fussy toddler over her shoulder.
As she laid her hand on the door knob a loud knock sounded from the other side. Sadie yelped, snatching her hand back as if her touch had caused the noise, then peeked through the peephole just in time to see Gertie pound on the door again.
“Sadie? Sadie, is everything okay? Is Izzy alright? I heard such a racket!”
Sadie unlocked the door and pulled it open. Gertie fell back a step, eyes widening, and Sadie wondered whether the older woman’s apparent alarm was for her sudden and harried appearance or for Izzy’s theatrics.
“Don’t run your taps, Gertie,” Sadie said, and now that the immediate shock had passed her voice came out quiet and calm. She’d fallen back into the habit of responding to a startle by making herself soft and soothing. “L’Arpin has some kind of—of pest infestation. It startled me, and I didn’t want Izzy to touch them, but we’re fine. It was sweet of you to check.”
“Sweet? Of course I checked, Sadie. That’s what people do.”
“Right, well, thank you, anyway. I’m sorry, I’m going to run, I need to tell Mr. Drye about this.”
“Of course, of course.” Gertie scooted back into the hallway and let Sadie pass. Sadie hustled to the elevator, glad that Gertie hadn’t offered to watch Izzy while she ran down to fetch Mr. Drye. Sadie didn’t want to rely on her old neighbor too much more than she had to. As the elevator doors closed on Sadie and Izzy, she faintly heard Gertie mutter, “Pests. Infestation!”
Sadie shook her head. The old woman had lived at L’Arpin for so long, the idea that it could be less than perfect might offend her. She hoped she hadn’t upset Gertie. She might not want to need her too much, but she did still need her.
By the time she stepped out into the lobby with her daughter, Izzy’s mercurial mood had shifted again, and Sadie blessed the quiet as she hurried up to the desk, only to find Dan seated behind it, scrolling on his phone.
“Oh, no,” Sadie huffed. “It’s Thursday, isn’t it?”
“You’re down early,” Dan said, glancing at Sadie before looking back down at his phone, then doing a fast double-take back up at Sadie. He frowned, and in a more alert voice he asked, “Everything alright?”
Sadie turned one way and the other, checking to be sure no guests would hear her. Then she said, “There’s some sort of pest infestation in my bathtub. Coming up the drain. They crawled out while I was showering, Dan.”
“Oh, gross.” Dan pulled a disgusted face and wiggled his shoulders in an exaggerated shudder. Mocking? Or sympathetic? She leaned back and shuttered her expression in case it was the former. “I’ll call Beth to go check your room, and I’ll make a note for Mr. Drye.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll meet her in my room.”
In the hall Sadie half-expected to find Gertie lingering, waiting to chat or to see what the fuss had been about. When the corridor proved empty, Sadie wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed. She bustled into the room and settled Izzy into her booster seat with a banana, resigning herself to cleaning a mushy mess up when this fiasco was sorted.
Then she headed for the bathroom.
She found the tub empty. No water, no wiggling tentacles.
Sadie stared, confusion mingling with a sick embarrassment. She’d caused such a scene and now Beth wouldn’t find anything when she got here.
Gritting her teeth, holding back a shiver, Sadie neared the tub and turned the water on. It poured from the faucet, and Sadie didn’t engage the shower instead. She twisted the knob all the way to hot and watched as the water rose, as the first wisps of steam curled above it. The things had come out with the hot water before, after all.
By the time Beth arrived to check on the problem, the tub was full again, but only with water.
“I don’t know what they were,” Sadie said when Beth asked her for the fourth time, “They had tentacles. They were little. They liked the heat. But I don’t know what they were.”
“Or where they’ve gone,” Beth said. She patted Sadie’s shoulder. “I’ll check the water heater and a couple other places. Don’t worry.”
Sadie bit her tongue and nodded, silently ushering Beth out of her room. Sure, Beth had promised to look into it. She’d said it the same way Sadie promised to check under Izzy’s bed for monsters.
Turning to lean against the closed door, Sadie rubbed her face, sliding her fingers under her glasses and pressing against her closed eyelids hard enough to make color flower across the darkness. When she dropped her hands she had a split view—to her side through the open door, the bathroom, and in front of her through the mouth of the little entry area, Izzy squeezing a piece of banana in both fists.
How could she wash the pulped remains of banana off Izzy’s hands, knowing that when she turned on the sink tiny tentacled creatures might plop out of the faucet and into their palms? Sadie shuddered. Then she took a long breath and let it out in something that was not quite a groan and not exactly a sigh, before reaching for her phone.
It may not be the end of the world, but it was time to call her mother.
On the third ring Sadie’s mother answered not with hello, but with, “So who died?”
Phone pressed to her ear, Sadie stood with her mouth open. After a couple seconds she caught herself, swallowed, and said, “What?”
“Well, my daughter is actually calling me,” her mother said, voice just a touch too sweet, “which only happens when somebody dies, right?”
“Nobody’s dead, Mom. I just need—”
“I see. Nobody’s dead, you just need something.” A low murmur came over the phone, her father’s voice, and Sadie’s mother pointedly answered his indistinct words, “It’s Sadie, I’d ask if you want to talk to her but Lord knows if you’d even recognize her voice anymore.”
Hot tears pricked Sadie’s eyes, the sting drawn more by anger than hurt. She should’ve known better. Should’ve taken time to prepare herself instead of jumping into this call.
“Alright, Mom,” Sadie sighed. She took her glasses off with her free hand and rubbed her eyes again with the back of her wrist, then forced out the words, “I’m sorry I haven’t called in a while. Things have been…” Her thoughts tumbled up against each other, the problems of the last couple years too many and too large to be distilled into something her mother would understand in one phone call. “Not good. It’s a long story. But I—” she had to say it fast, a rush of words, or she’d never get it out, and even so her voice dropped to nearly a whisper: “—I’m not sure Izzy and I are safe where we are.”
As if saying it made it somehow more true, the words left Sadie twisted up inside, cold and a little breathless. They also left a hole in the conversation, silence spiraling out over the phone. After a handful of seconds Sadie checked the screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
“Mom? Are you th—”
“Of course I’m here. I’m just stunned, Sadie. Stunned. Let me make sure I’m understanding this. After your father and I opened our home to you and you repaid us by making absolutely uncouth accusations and storming out—after practically cutting us off from our grandbaby—after getting engaged to a man you never even bothered to introduce us to—now you want to come back into our home, is that it?” Her father rumbled in the background again, and this time the sharpness of her mother’s answer sounded much more sincere than the mocking earlier when her mother answered him, “Exactly.”
“Please, Mom,” Sadie said, and even as the words spilled out of her she didn’t know if they were meant to be a real plea or an exasperated defense. She took a shaking breath and started over, leaning toward pleading. “Please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“I’m sure. I can just guess. I know firsthand what a difficult woman you are to live with, Sadie Anne Miles.” The implication stole Sadie’s breath, and before she could catch her balance and find some way to respond, her mother kept talking. “I’ll tell you what. If things are really bad, your father and I will come pick up Isabelle. She can have a nice long visit with us while you work out your own problems. But you marching into our home and telling us how to raise our granddaughter—”
“Excuse me?” Sadie turned her back to the room and lowering her voice to a harsh whisper so Izzy wouldn’t have to hear her rising distress. “You don’t get to raise your grandchild. She’s my daughter. Uncouth accusations? All I did was ask you and Dad to respect my boundaries as a parent, and you refused. You flat out refused. You tried to sneak her out to some antivax chickenpox spreading nonsense, Mom! What could possibly make you think I’d trust you to respect me as Izzy’s mother when I’m not there if you can’t do it when I’m watching you?”
“Okay. Well. Then I guess this conversation is over, isn’t it?”
“What? Wait a second—”
But her mother had already hung up.
“Damn it!” Sadie hissed, squeezing her phone to stop herself from throwing it. She couldn’t afford to replace it. Couldn’t afford anything. Not even a little decency from her own mother. She tried to find some depth of emotion, some rush of tears and betrayal. What she came up with instead was an unsurprised hopelessness, as dry and insubstantial as ash.
Sadie turned toward the still-open bathroom door, glanced at the innocent water in the tub, empty of life. Beth hadn’t believed her. That disbelief carried an edge, brought an embarrassed cringe to Sadie. But her own mother had all but accused her of putting herself and, worse, Izzy in danger.
Did everyone believe that Sadie was the problem? Now the emotions came, now shame surged, hot and sick in her gut and hot and clammy on her cheeks.
Sadie’s mother may have been—no, she had been—entirely out of line. But had Sadie deserved Beth’s condescension? The water in the tub stayed smooth and crystal-clear.
There would be no leaving L’Arpin yet. Still, she and Izzy would never bathe in this room again.