Eileen

by Ottessa Moshfegh

If I’d worn glasses I could have passed for smart, but I was too impatient to be truly smart. You’d have expected me to enjoy the stillness of closed rooms, take comfort in dull silence, my gaze moving slowly across paper, walls, heavy curtains, thoughts never shifting from what my eyes identified—book, desk, tree, person. But I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier.

Who really knew what happened inside the house while I was at work? It was a three-story colonial of brown wood and flaking red trim. I imagine my father sucking down that sherry in the spirit of Christmas, lighting an old cigar on the stove. That’s a funny picture. Generally he drank gin. Beer, occasionally. He was a drunk, as I said. He was simple in that way. When something was the matter, he was easy to distract and soothe: I’d just hand him a bottle and leave the room.

Ours was not a very nice home. After my mother died, we never sorted or put her things away, never rearranged anything, and without her to clean it, the house was dirty and dusty and full of useless decorations and crowded with things, things, things everywhere. And yet it felt completely empty. It was like an abandoned home, its owners having fled one night like Jews or gypsies.

My father had an armchair that he’d dragged from the den into the kitchen. He slept there. It was the kind of chair that shuttled backward at the pull of a lever, a charming novelty when he’d bought it. But the lever no longer worked. The thing had rusted into permanent repose. Everything in the house was like that chair—grimy, ruined, and frozen.

This one evening—I’ll begin my story there—I found him sitting barefoot on the stairs, drinking the sherry, the butt of a cigar between his fingers. “Poor Eileen,” he said sarcastically when I walked through the door. He was very contemptuous of me, found me pathetic and unattractive and had no qualms about saying so. If my daydreams from back then came true, one day I’d have found him splayed out at the bottom of the stairs, neck broken but still breathing.

So I loathed him, yes, but I was very dutiful. It was just the two of us in the house—Dad and me. I do have a sister, still alive as far as I know, but we haven’t spoken in over fifty years.

He was a cruel character. Imagining his parents beating him as a child is the only path to forgiveness that I have found so far. It isn’t perfect, but it does the trick.

looked so boring, lifeless, immune and unaffected, but in truth I was always furious, seething, my thoughts racing, my mind like a killer’s. It was easy to hide behind the dull face I wore, moping around.

I liked books about awful things—murder, illness, death. I remember selecting one of the thickest books from the public library, a chronicle of ancient Egyptian medicine, to study the gruesome practice of pulling the brains of the dead out through the nose like skeins of yarn.

I could be very dramatic in my self-assessments. Besides books, I enjoyed my issues of National Geographic magazine, which I got delivered to me in the mail. That was a real luxury and made me feel very special. Articles describing the naive beliefs of the primitives fascinated me.

I was dark, you might say. Moony. But I don’t think I was really so hardhearted by nature. Had I been born into a different family, I might have grown up to act and feel perfectly normal.

Truth be told, I was a glutton for punishment. I didn’t really mind getting bossed around by my father. I’d get angry, and I loathed him, yes, but my fury gave my life a kind of purpose, and running his errands killed time. That is what I...

Summers I was restless and cranky. I’d break out in rashes, have to lie in cold baths. I’d sit at my desk in the prison whipping a paper fan furiously at my face. I did not like to sweat in front of other people. Such proof of carnality I found lewd, disgusting. Similarly, I did not like to dance or do sports. I did not listen to the Beatles or watch Ed Sullivan on TV. I wasn’t interested in fun or popularity back then.

preferred to read about ancient times, distant lands. Knowledge of anything current or faddish made me feel I was just a victim of isolation. If I avoided all that on purpose, I could believe I was in control.

The town was a pretty place, quaint, you’d call it. And unless you’ve grown up in New England, you don’t know the peculiar stillness of a coastal town covered in snow at night. It is not like in other places. The light does something funny at sunset. It seems not to wane but to recede out toward the ocean. The light just gets pulled away.

So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for children. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared.

My father had warned me when I’d started there at age twenty-one, naive beyond reproach, that the most dangerous individuals in a prison are not the criminals but the very people who work there. I can confirm this to be true. Those were perhaps the wisest words my father ever told me.

Nobody paid any attention to me at all in that office. The office women were all so soured and flat and cliquish. I suspected at the time they were secretly homosexual for each other. Such persuasions were more and more on one’s mind back then, townsfolk ever watchful for the errant “latent homosexual” on the prowl.

It helped me to have a little compassion when I imagined them going home at night to their disgusting husbands, so bitter, so lonely. On the other hand, to think of them with their blouses unbuttoned, hands in each other’s brassieres, legs spread, made me want to vomit.

I didn’t know that there were others like me in the world, those who didn’t “fit in,” as people like to put it. Furthermore, as is typical for any isolated, intelligent young person, I thought I was the only one with any consciousness, any awareness of how odd it was to be alive, to be a creature on this strange planet Earth. I’ve seen episodes of The Twilight Zone which illustrate the kind of straight-faced derangement I felt in X-ville. It was very lonely.

Once my mother got sick—“fell ill” is an expression I like for its prissiness and, hence, its irony with respect to her violent demise—my father started taking time off work, drinking at home, wandering the streets at night, falling asleep on neighbors’ porches. And then he drank more—in the mornings, on the job. He totaled a squad car, and then fired his gun by accident in the locker room. Because he had seniority and was beloved by the whole department for reasons I’ll never understand, these indiscretions were never discussed openly. He was simply encouraged into an early retirement, replete with pension and constant surveillance and babying as the time went on and he got into more and more trouble.

doubt Randy would have recognized me if he’d found me camped out back there, surveilling him. I doubt he even knew my name. Still, I prayed for the perfect occasion to win him over. I spent hours sitting there scheming how I’d impress him with my feminine wiles. My daydreams of fingers and tongues and secret rendezvous in the back hallways of Moorehead kept my heart beating, or else I think I would have dropped dead from boredom. Thus, I lived in perpetual fantasy. And like all intelligent young women, I hid my shameful perversions under a facade of prudishness. Of course I did. It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails. My father, for example, had no discretion about his pornographic magazines. They

And yet he was so staunchly Catholic. Of course he was. My own hypocrisies paled in comparison to my father’s. I’ve never had any guilt for what I did to him. I’ve been lucky in that regard.

He knew how to hurt me. I understood, nevertheless, that he was a drunk, that whatever cruel words he had for me were the nonsensical mumblings of a man who had lost his mind. He was convinced he’d need witness protection from all the work he had done “pinning down the mob.” He seemed to think of himself as some kind of imprisoned vigilante, a saint forced to contend with evil from the confines of his cold abode.

Seeing movies has never been a favorite pastime of mine, but that afternoon I craved company. I didn’t like movies for the same reason I don’t like novels: I don’t like being told how to think. It’s insulting. And the stories are all so hard to believe. Furthermore, beautiful actresses always made me feel terrible about myself.

My curiosity for the stars is obvious: I wanted something to tell me my future was bright. I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library—something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

“God is a made-up story,” our mother told us, “like Santa Claus. There is nobody watching you when you’re alone. You decide for yourself what’s right and wrong. There are no prizes for good little girls. If you want something, fight for it. Don’t be a fool.” I don’t think she was ever so caring as when she delivered this terrifying pronouncement: “To hell with God. And to hell with your father.” I remember sitting for hours on my bed after that, picturing all of eternity laid out before me.

I’m not as angry at my father for his idiotic moralism as I am for the way he treated me. He had no loyalty to me. He was never proud of me. He never praised me. He simply didn’t like me. His loyalty was to the gin, and his twisted war against the hoodlums, his imaginary enemies, the ghosts.

New York wasn’t that far from X-ville. Two hundred fifty-seven miles south, to be exact. But first I’d lead any search astray by abandoning the Dodge in Rutland, which I’d read about in a book about railroads. In Rutland I’d find some kind of abandoned lot or dead-end street, and then I’d walk to the railway station and take a train down to the city to start my new life. I thought I was so smart. I planned to bring along an empty suitcase to carry the clothes I’d take off once I got on the train. I’d have some clothes, the money I’d been hoarding in the attic, and nothing else.

We also welcome two additions to our prison staff, Dr. Morris, our new sanity professional, as I like to think of you—welcome, welcome. And Miss Saint John, our education expert. She may be easy on the eyes, fellows, but I assure you, she’s very clever and will have more to make of your sick minds than I could ever hope to. You will all meet with her in due time. If that is not incentive enough to keep you quiet this afternoon, I don’t know what is. And now, without further ado.”

I certainly could have passed for crazy on days when I’d not slept and showed up unkempt and hungover, rolling my eyes at every noise and gnashing my teeth at every flicker of light. In my childish self-centeredness, I fantasized that this was what the black boys talked about with their mothers: how much pain Eileen is in, how Eileen seems to need a friend, how Eileen deserves better. I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul, though I doubt they saw me at all.

It was through studying the comportment of imprisoned youngsters that I developed my understanding of the strange spectrum of male emotions.

I ran up into the shower as silently as I could. Let me be clear about this: I was not a lesbian. But I was attracted to Rebecca, yearned for her attention and approval, and I admired her. You could call it a crush. Rebecca might as well have been Marlon Brando, James Dean.

I was glad Rebecca wasn’t married or just out to find a husband. That’s what girls did back then—hunted for husbands. I wonder if she ever did get married. I like imagining her with a short, nebbish sort of husband—a Jew most likely—because I think that’s what she’d need, someone intelligent and serious and neurotic, unimpressed by her gregariousness and sparkling repartee. Someone controlling.

“Things feel very real out here, don’t they? There’s simply no fantasy. And no sentimentality. That’s what fascinates me. There is history and pride, but very little imagination here.”

I just nodded. But of course she was dead wrong. We New Englanders are uptight for sure, but we have strong minds. We use our imaginations effectively. We don’t waste our brains on magical notions or useless frills, but we do have the ability to fantasize.

“Thank you, Eileen,” she said, looking at me oddly. “You know, you remind me of a Dutch painting,” she said, staring into my eyes. “You have a strange face. Uncommon. Plain, but fascinating. It has a beautiful turbulence hidden in it. I love it. I bet you have brilliant dreams. I bet you dream of other worlds.” She threw her head back and laughed that evil laugh, then smiled sweetly. “Maybe you’ll dream of me and my morning remorse, which you can count on.

She appeared to be a woman of means—her clothes were fashionable and looked expensive. But even if she dressed in rags, it would have been clear that Rebecca was not a poor woman. You can see wealth in people no matter what they’re wearing. It’s in the cut of their chins, a certain gloss to the skin, a drag and pause to their responsiveness. When poor people hear a loud noise, they whip their heads around. Wealthy people finish their sentences, then just glance back. Rebecca was wealthy, and I knew it.

And I figured it took courage and a big heart for a rich woman like Rebecca to live amongst people who worked in factories and gas stations and on fishing boats, or not at all. I imagined the neighborhood was the place my father had done his best work, beating up teenagers, busting into houses full of drunken yelling, a room full of crying children, men with long hair, and fleshy, wrinkly women with rotted teeth and tattoos, wearing only underwear.

My senses were sharp, but the chaos of the place was buzzing with something I couldn’t immediately identify. Rebecca fidgeted with her hair. She seemed different. She seemed terribly uneasy. I felt I’d walked into a scene from a movie in which someone was going mad, the air heavy with suspense. I tried my best to look natural, smile, to read Rebecca’s stilted cues.

I gave Rebecca the benefit of the doubt, tried to justify her grunginess the way I justified my own. The grime on her kitchen table meant she couldn’t be bothered to clean. Well, neither could I. And that made sense to me. Surely

And Eileen?” She leaned forward, grabbed me by the calf. “You can’t tell anyone about this, you promise?” I nodded. Rebecca’s hand on my leg was enough for me to promise her the world. I still couldn’t understand her earnestness, her grave intensity about the Polks. What did it matter? Why did she care? When she stuck out her slender pinky finger, I hooked mine around it. We shook. This gesture felt so heartfelt, so pure, and yet so perverse, my eyes filled with tears. “This isn’t my house, Eileen,” Rebecca said then. “It’s the Polk house. I have Rita Polk tied up downstairs.”

I must sound terribly self-pitying, complaining that my father didn’t love me enough to hit me. But so what? I’m old now. My bones have thinned, my hair has grayed, my breathing has become slow and shallow, my appetite meager. I’ve had more than my fair share of scrapes and bruises, and I have lived long enough that self-pity is no longer a pathetic habit of the psyche, but like a cold wet cloth on my forehead bringing down the fever of fear about my inevitable mortal demise. Poor me, yes, poor me. When I was young I didn’t care at all for my physical well-being. All young people believe they are invincible, that they know well enough not to heed any silly warnings. It was this kind of brave stupidity that led me out of X-ville.

So when Rebecca’s revelation hit me, I wasn’t as horrified as you’d expect. I was insulted, however. Suddenly it became obvious to me that her friendship was not motivated purely out of admiration and affection, as I’d have preferred to think. Rebecca had forged a rapport, it was clear, as part of a strategy. She assumed I’d be useful to her, and I suppose in the end I was.

“It started yesterday afternoon. I invited myself into Mrs. Polk’s home,” she said. She steadied her voice so as to seem unruffled, collected, believable, as though rehearsing what she’d tell a judge or jury. “I confronted her about her and her husband’s actions, repeating what Lee told me about the enemas, the sexual abuse, all that.” She jangled her hand as though to gesture upstairs, where the routine rape occurred.

Here is how I spend my days now. I live in a beautiful place. I sleep in a beautiful bed. I eat beautiful food. I go for walks through beautiful places. I care for people deeply. At night my bed is full of love, because I alone am in it. I cry easily, from pain and pleasure, and I don’t apologize for that. In the mornings I step outside and I’m thankful for another day.