My mother’s name is Moira. Her husband is Quadrey. Their last name is Quinzical.
My name is Quincey. I was born to Moira and Quadrey Quinzical on Friday, February thirteen, 1976. Well—actually—I was born to Quadrey Quinzical and Moira Quellentine. My parents were unmarried at the time I was birthed. Had I been born on February fourteen, the names of my parents would be Moira and Quadrey Quinzical, and Quinzical only. They aren’t devout Catholics.
I spend a reasonable amount of time with my parents, but it could be more. Moira Seven doesn’t work on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so those days aren’t available. And the days when I must go to the store. I hate going to the store. The cashiers always give a weird eye when checking out my list, and people always take a step away from me in line as if I don’t wear deodorant. I do.
I’m not quite ready to introduce Moira Seven to my parents. Soon, hopefully. I just need the courage.
“I’m leaving, Quincey,” Moira Seven says from the front door, wearing her purple scrubs and a pink fanny pack.
I walk to her, and we peck each other on the lips before hugging. I could crush her bones if I want.
“Have I ever told you that you look great in purple?” I say.
She drops her head and blushes like an embarrassed child.
“Every time I wear it,” she replies. “I love you to death, Honey Bunches of Oats.”
“Promise?” I say.
Quincey Quinzical fiddles with a gold ring while staring out the front door. He waits for Moira Gaylewood’s red PT Cruiser to drift away from the replica of his childhood home.
He runs to the bathroom he and his girlfriend share—outside their separate bedrooms—and takes a key out of the bottom drawer on his side.
Quincey inserts the key into the basement door.
The smell of it is never pleasant, even for biology professor Q, but the pure joy that elicits from his skin in the form of goosebumps of getting to see his parents—his dear mother!—always instantly eradicates any negative feeling he could possibly feel from something so minor as a fume. It is also quite frigid. Because of the meat freezer, of course. There is also a gun on a desk to the side.
“Do you want some food, Mommy? You’ve got to be starving! I’ll make some popcorn.”
Life is better when Moira Seven is gone and I’m with my parents. Sometimes, I think about getting rid of her so I can spend all my time with my parents.
(Pop. Pop. Pop.)
Moira Seven is my first girlfriend. I found twenty-three of them on the online dating site I used, and I went on a date with every single one of them. Well, I would have, but I stopped on Moira Number Seven.
She was Date Number Three on Day Two of my originally planned week-long dating spree. She was perfect.
(Pop, pop, pop)
I planned all my dates at the bowling alley. On that day, Moira Number Five was first at 12:00 post meridian. She was close—no question.
“If you could meet one person in history, who would it be?” Moira Five asks.
“Freud,” Quincey replies, prepping to bowl, ball centered in front of his face.
“Of course,” Moira says as Quincey releases the ball. “The greatest psychologist—scientist, if you will.”
Quincey turns with a smirk, bowling a strike.
“Of course.”
But she beat me in our second and final round of pins, and I couldn’t have that.
Moira Number Six arrived at 3:03 post meridian when she should’ve been there at 3:00. I wasn’t always particularly fond of my father—his greatest quality is that Moira Quellentine loved him—but he did offer me an important piece of advice: “Always show up at least five minutes early to your occasion, and—if you reallycare—be there fifteen minutes early.”
“Will you leave?” Quincey demands.
“But we have one more game le—”
“I can bowl for you.”
Moira Seven, however, showed up to the lanes at 5:22 post meridian… thirty-eight minutes before our date was supposed to begin.Of course, I’m a man of my word—as she is, but a woman—so we waited to start the date until the official time of 6:00.
(Pop pop pop)
During this time, I continued to hash up my skills in lane thirteen of twenty-six while she sat in a wooden chair behind the pool tables. I knew it was her because each time I laid my eyes on her, she would shrivel in her seat, and her face would convert to the color of a ripe mango.
It was a relatively silent date—the best kind. We played our two rounds of pins, her complimenting my every move, just like Mom would, while I proved to her my remarkable bowling skills. I don’t think her teeth were ever covered by her lips the entire time we played.
(Poppoppop)
I called Moira Number Eight to tell her to not bother coming to the bowling alley at our scheduled time of 9:00 post meridian. I had found my Moira.
(Popopopopopopopopop)
What struck me most deeply about Moira Seven was how closely resembled she was to my mother. Black hair that was shorter than mine; skin as pale as a vampire’s; deep, dark brown eyes that have a specific beauty that can only be seen by the ones that love them most; and a body that could probably be snapped if they wore a dress that was a size too small.
(Pop… pop… pop…)
Beauty. Pure, utter beauty.
(BEEP! BEEP! BE—)
Quincey Quinzical sits between his parents on the couch. He feeds Quadrey and Moira by forcing the popcorn down their throats. With the same hand he uses to prod the popcorn through his parents’ mouths, he eats some of the popcorn himself, licking his fingers afterward so he isn’t wasting any food.
He also feeds them Kool-Aid. It gets sticky quickly, but he makes sure to clean the mess with his shirt. He recycles the shirt back onto his body.
Quincey is playing The Shining this morning—his favorite movie. His favorite scene in The Shining is the bathroom scene with the lady in the tub. He makes his mommy cover his eyes with her hand when the nude woman arises from the tub, but he always manages to peek through the hand like shutters in a window. He has always been more interested in what the woman becomes, really.
After the movie, it is nighty-night time—Quincey’s least favorite part of the day.
After Quincy returns his parents, they pray together, and they talk about how lucky they are to still have each other. And he gives his mother a goodnight kiss.
“How was your day, Honey Bunches of Oats?” Moira Seven says—she always says—every time she enters through the doors of my home and sees me sitting on the couch.
“Fine,” I always am. “Nothing spectacular happened today,” I always continue.
“That’s great, honey!” she always ends, and then our actual conversation always begins.
“So,” she starts in a tone like one of a parent who is about to tell their child they have a surprise for them. Unfortunately, I know the surprise, and I am not fond of it. “Are you excited for tonight?”
I make my way to the kitchen to pour a glass of red wine.
“Elaborate,” I reply.
“It’s our date night, honey!”
“Oh yes, oh yes. That’s right. But don’t you have work in the morning?”
“Honey,” she drags with a hint of frustration, “you know I don’t work on Saturdays.”
“Oh yes, oh yes. That’s right.”
“Are you excited?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Yay! I’ll be getting readyyy.”
And before she goes to her room: “I love you, Quincey,” she says in the same way she always says it: like it’s the final time she’ll ever get to say it.
“I know you do, Moira.”
I smile, and she does too—teeth uncovered.
I cannot remember the last time I put on makeup. Wait! Yes, I can. It was two-hundred and fifty-five days ago—on the night I united with the love of my life, Quincey Quinzical. What a lovely day that was.
Quincey doesn’t like to go out often. I’d say that it is his biggest flaw. Not that it’s really a flaw at all. Some people just aren’t “people people”, if you know what I mean. As long as he likes me, everything is fine.
I really hope he wears that turtleneck again tonight. Not to say that he doesn’t have a nice neck.
I’m Moira, by the way! Moira Gaylewood. Sorry for jumping in on the conversation like that, all willy-nilly. I just really enjoy talking to other people. I’m a “people people”. A Leo. What can I say.
I want to go to Japan one day. I got this jar after I watched the original Godzilla movie when I was thirteen, and I’ve put a dollar in it every day to save up to go. The culture is just so fascinating! Way ahead of America, I would say. The ‘United States’ America, that is.
What am I supposed to put on first again?
Oh, this white powder is so obnoxious. It’s perfect!
I love Quincey. Just the sight of him every day after work makes my heart flutter. I truly believe we were meant to be together forever; and, I know he can be a little blunt sometimes and seem like he doesn’t care, but I really believe he feels the same way.
Ugh, I’m crying. How embarrassing!
This powder tastes horrible!
But don’t you think so, too? That he loves me?
Oh my God! Where did this unibrow come from?
Moira fumbles with everything on the desk, searching for tweezers. After failing to find any, she leaves her room for the bathroom.
Quincey is in a deep sleep. A Rubik’s cube lays on his chest, and Beauty and the Beast is playing on the box TV.
Moira digs through all the drawers on her side of the bathroom, unable to find any tweezers. She hesitates for a moment, and then scavenges through Quincey’s side—all the way down to the final drawer.
“Moira,” Quincey calls, zipping up his blue Banana Republic pants. He’s not wearing the turtleneck. “Moira?”
Quincey leaves his bedroom for the living room. Moira is nowhere to be seen.
Quincey knocks on Moira’s bedroom door. He looks around cautiously before entering. He has never been in there before.
It smells so much of lavender, it can almost be tasted. The dark purple walls are covered with flags and pennants of different countries. Above her pink bed, the Japanese flag is framed.
Quincey tiptoes through a litter of extravagant dresses toward the closet. He stops at her desk.
Makeup cases cover most of the space—along with the jar—but what catches his eye is what is on the wall above the desk. A calendar is at the top. Every date before today is marked out and has a number that signifies a countdown, and today’s date is vibrantly colored with the words “DATE NIGHT” on it. Below the calendar are pictures of men and women. There is an ‘X’ in red sharpie through each picture. All except for Quincey’s picture on the far right.
His eyes fall to a yearbook that is propped up on the corner of the desk. He snatches it and scans through the pages.
More pictures are marked out—even entire pages. The first page like this he encounters shows the girls basketball team. Most of the girls are pictured performing impressive feats, such as making a jump shot or pulling off a difficult dribble move. Moira’s picture, however, shows her taking a hard screen, and the caption below it screams, “DETERMINATION”.
The next page marked out shows a cafeteria. Moira sits in the corner by herself, eating a salad.
The last marked-out page Quincey sees is of prom night. While the king and queen, Quincy supposes, are doing their dance, Moira is pictured in the back, fallen on her rear. The people around her are silently giggling, some less obvious than others.
Quincey props the book gently in its original positioning. Then, he stands still, contemplating. A smile forms on his face before he leaves the room.
He scampers through the entire house, leaving no room unchecked. Except for one.
Then, faintly, as if the voice were coming through one of those whisper phones you made as a child, I hear a cry.
I open the door to beauty.
My mother and father lie on the ground in their usual décor: my father in a standard, black and white tux, my dear mother in her favorite short, strawberry red dress. Moira Seven stands behind them in a white wedding dress—with a veil and everything—with her head aimed down. The desk sits to the side with its sole decoration.
“You like Japan,” I say.
She picks up her head. Her makeup is perfect.
“Yes,” she replies.
“You want to go there.”
She nods. She squats down and strokes my mother’s hair.
“Your mother is beautiful,” she says.
“I know.”
“I look a little bit like her.”
I nod.
“What are their names?” Moira asks.
“Quadrey and Moira.”
I find the ring in my pocket and roll it across my fingers.
“What a coincidence,” she mutters.
Moira stops brushing my mother’s hair and stares at me—fatigue in her eyes.
“Why didn’t you introduce them to me before?” she says.
“Never found the right—”
Her eyes release from mine and back to my mother, and she says in a voice so blunt, I think it is coming from a being within her, “Why did you never tell me?”
She stands up swiftly and walks to the desk. She picks up my silver, chrome handgun.
“Who are the people in the photos?” I say in a voice that probably isn’t mine either.
Moira whimpers. The gun dangles loosely in her hand.
“I was always the loser, Quincey. The freak. The girl who was going to grow up and own a bunch of cats.”
A violent sob escapes her mouth.
“I don’t even like cats,” she says incoherently, then inhales sharply.
“I know you don’t.”
“I know I’m weird, Quincey.”
She laughs and wipes her nose. Snot fills her forearm.
“But I think you are, too,” she finishes.
“Who are the people in the photos, Moira?”
Tears are fighting to leave her eyes. The gun dangles loosely in her hand.
“They’re my exes, alright! I’m sorry, Quincey, honey. I didn’t mean to yell at you—”
“Why are they marked out?”
She laughs—genuinely.
“None of them compare to you, Quincey!” I almost can’t understand what she is saying, she speaks so quickly. “None of them loved me like you do.”
This time, I laugh, and she laughs with me.
“You know,” I say, “I thought I wanted to kill you.” Her laugh sprouts even higher, and mine goes along with it. “But now,” I contemplate, “I want you alive.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that, Honey Bunches of Oats,” she laughs.
My stomach drops to the floor, and my mouth follows it.
“Wha-what do you mean, Moira?” I ask. I try to hide the worry in my voice.
She smiles my favorite smile. And the gun goes to her head.
“Moira, I don’t want this anymore. I—I…”
Tears finally drift down the corners of her eyes, but not too many. A new smile forms on her face—an ugly smile with a crinkly face that I love even more. The gun remains.
“Quincey?” she says, barely louder than a whisper.
My collapsed throat is barely able to croak, “Yes?”
“Take me to Japan one day.”
I charge for her, but it’s too late.
The blood leaks onto the floor like a faulty fountain that looks to require maintenance, sputtering here and there, as it escapes Moira’s head. It permeates through her dress.
Quincey slowly approaches Moira, a few tears flowing down his cheeks, a hand behind his back. He gets down on one knee if front of her and reveals the ring to her.
He slips the ring onto her finger, and then they dance with no music playing. After they are done, he lays her down next to Moira Quinzical.
For the last time, he puts his father into the meat freezer; then his mother; then his fiancé.
There is one more spot available.
He grabs the gun and takes all but one bullet out of the chamber. Then he enters the freezer with the rest of his family. He positions the head of the gun to his forehead, unwavering.
“I gave her your ring, Momma. She’s a Quinzical now.”