“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. Unsettled by the rage in her voice, I followed her into the living room, where everyone else had already gathered.
“Find a seat.” My mother cradled two pies in one arm, her coffee mug and a fistful of forks in the other. She looked like a domestic cocktail waitress. “Vera, can you get the plates?”
More chairs had been brought in, including the mildewed ones we kept on the back patio. I sat on a metal folding chair nearest the end of the couch, by Milo, who took one of the pies from my mother and put it on the coffee table. There was strawberry and an egg custard, my father’s favorite. Milo cut me a big hunk of the custard, also my favorite, and handed it to me on a plate. I knew whatever was coming would be very bad.
“Welcome, everybody. Make sure you get some pie; the strawberry is Bizzie’s and you know how good those are.” My mother gestured strangely around the room with a sweep of her arm, as if the strapless dress made her feel compelled to act like Vanna White unveiling the letters to the final puzzle.
Lolee scooted back by my feet, messing with the laces on my boots until I kicked at her to stop. She turned around, smiled, and bit my knee through my jeans. Lucinda stood against the wall beside my father’s cape-eared owl, one of his earliest pieces, a real showstopper. He’d rendered it mid-flight, clutching a taxidermied mouse in its talons. He’d won a prize for it, some contest. Lucinda’s eyes darted between me and Lolee. I put a hand on my niece’s neck and spun her back around.
“If we’re all settled?”
“Oh, go on and show us, Libby. Stop screwing around.” Vera sat in one of the dining room chairs, pie plate tipping sideways on her lap until strawberry juice threatened to spill on her dress. I prayed it would spill and we’d have to take thirty minutes to find a stain remover stick. Then we could forget this whole train wreck of a night and get on with our lives.
“Lucinda, could you assist me?”
Scooting around the owl’s outstretched wing, Lucinda looked at me one last time before she disappeared down the hall. She mouthed something that looked like the word sorry. My fingers tightened on Lolee’s neck until she let out a squawk and swatted at me.
My mother stepped to the side and flicked on the light switch next to the standing lamp. The hall lit up, profiling a large animal, moving forward jaggedly. Bizzie Lee screamed and pressed a hand to her throat, snagging her husband’s arm. Vera’s plate finally tipped all the way over. A puddle of strawberry juice pooled in the middle of her skirt.
It was a water buffalo, or it had been at one point in its miserable life. The beast sat on a wheeled platform pushed by Lucinda, who stared resolutely down at the floor and refused to make eye contact with me. My mother cleared her throat and unearthed a stack of index cards from the top of her dress. She read from them and gestured, pointing at various parts of the animal.
“Now, this is just a teaser. The show opens in two weeks. It highlights similarities between sex acts in the animal kingdom and those in modern suburbia. Grief and anger. Specifically correlations to myself and my late husband, Prentice.”
Milo was stabbing at his pie like he wanted to murder it. I set my plate down on the floor and then picked it up again, not sure what to do with my hands. No one else was eating.
My mother continued, smiling. Shuffling through her index cards. “I want to use his taxidermy to illustrate the repressive nature of relationships and sexuality. There’s a strong connection between sadomasochism and how modern domestic marriages set us up for cyclical punishment. These works explore that.”
She stuffed the cards back into her top and grabbed a rope attached to a ring in the water buffalo’s snout. She yanked hard. It stuck for a moment, dragging through the shag carpet we’d had since before I was born, then trundled the rest of the way into the room. There it sat, dumb and mutilated, between Jay and the coffee table full of pies.
“What have you done, Libby?” Vera pointed and then quickly retracted her finger, as if the thing in front of her might contaminate it. “What is this?”
The buffalo’s body was festooned with whips and paddles of various sizes. Chain mail and leather gear were sewn over its torso. Between its horns sat a ludicrously tiny studded leather cap. The buffalo’s mouth hung open in a snarl, tongue dangling lasciviously.
Lolee leaned forward to get a better look and I pulled her back against me, trapping her in place with my knees.
“Mom.” Milo rubbed his face until I could hear the scratching of his beard under his palms. “Please tell me that’s not who I think it is.”
“Dear Jesus.” Travis breathed out reverently, his eyes huge. “He’s right there on top.”
Mounted atop the buffalo’s back was a mannequin. It wore a tight suit made out of patent leather, showing off lean muscle in the thighs and chest. Almost the entire body was covered, aside from the face, which peeked ghostlike from the opening in the leather.
It was my father. Wasn’t it always him? Sprigs of dusky gray hair showed just below the press of the black patent leather coating his skull. His mustache was full and bristling above a gentle smile. The glasses were missing, but it was unmistakably his face—the one that hung over me when he tucked me into bed at night. The eyes that squinted into narrow slits when he laughed. His full cheeks. Crooked nose. Unlike the buffalo, with its snide look of dripping lust, my father seemed nearly beatific. Peaceful, for once in his life.
“He doesn’t have anything covering his ass,” Bastien said, laughing. “It’s just hanging out there for God and the world to see. Holy shit.”
My mother stood there, admiring her work. She kneaded the buffalo’s coat, combing through it like dolls’ hair. My faux father’s knee glanced against her shoulder. She patted it absentmindedly. Even though I’d known what to expect—more so than anyone else in the house—it was still unnerving to view the piece in my childhood home. How many times growing up had we spent Thanksgiving dinners just this way: friends and relatives sitting on folding chairs, eating food everyone had prepared in our family’s kitchen, sharing stories we’d all heard a thousand times. Eating pie. Drinking too-sweet coffee. Here we were, back again, except my father, instead of lounging in his recliner, sat astride a buffalo in S&M gear. It was surreal to see him on display, to watch people we knew look at our family; watch them reassess everything they thought they knew about us.
“That’s really something.” Vera set the plate down on the floor beside her chair and scrubbed at the strawberry juice with a napkin. “That’s just . . . really something.”
My mother took a deep breath and smiled, hand still cupped around the figure’s knee. “I have a couple more things I’d like to show you all. But first, who’d like some more pie?”
PROCYON LOTOR—COMMON RACCOON
Gripping the pelt made me feel less like ripping out my own hair. I wanted to pull handfuls of it straight from the root, until the pain in my scalp forced me to stop thinking. Instead I dug mercilessly into the still-wet raccoon, gouging holes in the soft spots closest to the tail. Its skin hung limp, too big for its baby body.
The skeletons sat beside me at the table next to a collection of felt and wire. Thread unspooled and dripped onto the floor. The bones were nearly ready for an acid bath, but I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to scrape free the last of the gristle. Flipping the pelt again, I looked at the places where my thumbs had torn angry divots into the snout. The baby was tiny. Its jaw still held milk teeth.