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MILF

Rebekah Matthews

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My best friend Marilyn is sometimes dumb, and sucks at the Internet, but I’m not and I don’t. When I’m over at her house I get bored because Marilyn is outside smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone to her boyfriend; so I get on the computer in the living room and check my e-mail or chat with my other less annoying friends. It is difficult to type very much, though, because Marilyn’s mom loves cats—six of them live in the house; it constantly vaguely smells like cat shit—they jump on my lap and rub their cheeks against the keyboard.

I check the computer’s browser history, and I see her mom is posting naked pictures of herself on the Internet. She looks a lot prettier in the pictures than how she does usually. Her eyelashes are dark, her lips are dark, her hair is down and straightened. She looks better naked, too, than either Marilyn or I do—her boobs are way bigger, she must have gotten a boob job, her stomach is flatter. There’s a DONATE button at the bottom of her page that links out to her Amazon.com wish-list. It’s all for cat stuff, litter and mouse toys and scratching posts.

Marilyn comes back inside, smelling like smoke. I say, “I read that you’ll have a lower likelihood of getting lung cancer if you quit before you turn forty.” Marilyn says I’m depressing, that her boyfriend just told her that he loves her.

One Saturday evening, Marilyn’s mom is getting ready for a date; she is showing us the necklace she inherited from Marilyn’s grandmother, real pearls. I say, “I have never seen real pearls before.” She fastens the necklace. The clasp gets stuck in the hairs on the back of her neck. She pulls it out. She asks if I want to touch them. I wrap my fingers around the strand. I push my hand back a little, closer to her chest, so I can feel her heart beating. I don’t think she notices. There is a thump and another. I say, “They are lovely.” I take my hand away.

I wonder if Marilyn thinks about how that necklace will belong to Marilyn after her mom dies. I wonder if Marilyn thinks about her mom dying at all. Ever since I saw those pictures on the Internet I do the same thing every night before I go to sleep. I take off my shirt and close my eyes and curl in a ball so I take up the least amount of space possible. I imagine her mom sitting down next to me and dropping her voice the way she drops her voice when she talks to her stupid cats. I imagine her telling me how to straighten my hair, how to pose naked in the most flattering light. I imagine her asking me, “Are you going to remember this?” and I never know what the answer should be. I imagine her being gone.