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Artwork: Breeding Goats to Have Human Characteristics by Will Jacques

The Disciple of Baphomet
Kevin P. Keating

I have yet to meet my new housekeeper. She comes highly recommended from one of the more affordable agencies headquartered in an anonymous brick building along the industrial riverfront where, if local historians are to be trusted, a loose affiliation of second-rate magicians used to gather during the Depression to practice their dark arts. Like those illusionists, my housekeeper vanishes with remarkable precision before I arrive home from my office at the graphic design firm. She is meticulous in her duties, and her schedule never varies.

Every Friday afternoon, while I’m creating minimalist logos and obsessing over fonts, she attends to the dreadful messes I make during the week and puts everything back in order. She waters the neglected aspidistra and waxes its wilting leaves. She pulls the recliner and sectional sofa away from the exposed brick walls to vacuum the dust that gathers in furry gray clumps along the baseboards. She also cleans the three enormous loft windows overlooking the downtown streets. I have no idea how she reaches the highest glass panels. I can only guess that, along with her brooms and dustpans, her mops and spray bottles, her soaps and disinfectants, she lugs a step ladder everywhere she goes. I also have reason to believe she wears a toolbelt. During hard freezes and winter storms the big square-cut carpentry nails have a tendency to pop out of the hardwood floors, but the housekeeper hammers them back into place. In the six months she has worked for me, she has oiled squeaking hinges, repaired dripping faucets, patched and sanded small holes in the plaster, and adjusted the wobbling blades of an incorrectly calibrated ceiling fan.

When it comes to manual labor, you see, I have no natural ability.

Ever since my divorce last summer, I’ve been renting this two-bedroom apartment in a converted warehouse not far from the lake. The building is more than a century old, a relic from the sweatshop days of the early twentieth century when children as young as eight and nine were sent at dawn by their half-starving parents to work twelve-hour shifts at the looms and presses. In my dreams I see them sometimes, the shades of those miserable little boys and girls, their faces sparkling with graphite dust, their tiny fingers working the spindles of those unforgiving high-speed machines. I have an 18-year old daughter who lives with her father. Had she been around in the days before the enactment of child labor laws, she would have been a professional saboteur. Within an hour of entering the building, she would have made sure every lever and gear had malfunctioned. What’s more, an entire army of cigar-chomping overseers, their eyes scanning the floor for whimpering slackers, never would have caught her in the act. She is a genuine sneak, my daughter, and an exceptionally convincing liar.

To blame her for my divorce might sound callous but trust me when I say she made life far more stressful than it needed to be. Now, instead of living in a suburban colonial with my family, I live in a fashionable but drafty downtown loft for upwardly mobile young professionals with a tentative grasp of the city’s past. Well, “young” might be something of an exaggeration. I turned forty-five yesterday.

At five o’clock sharp, I crept unnoticed from my cubicle and headed home. I was actually relieved when my colleagues, who lack the usual social graces, avoided me at the office and forgot to wish me a happy birthday. I was looking forward to an evening alone with my customary bottle of red wine and carry-out from my favorite Italian restaurant around the block, but when I opened my apartment door, I was surprised to find dozens of gray helium balloons rolling like angry thunderheads along the ceiling. It was only a matter of time before the balloons popped against the rough wooden beams. My daughter, still wearing her black overcoat, looked up from her phone and sprang like a startled cat from the recliner. Her scuffed engineer boots left prints on the freshly polished floor.

“Surprise?” she said with a sheepish grin.

I glanced at the kitchen counter. Evidently the candles on the cupcakes had been burning for quite some time. Thick pools of hot wax had congealed on the chocolate frosting. I set my portfolio down on the coffee table and calmly explained that she wasn’t scheduled to stay with me until next weekend. I pointed to the calendar hanging on the wall where I’d circled the dates with a red highlighter.

“But I thought I should see you, Mom, on your birthday.”

Deciding for the moment to play along with her charade, I took a seat at the kitchen counter and patiently smiled as she sang to me. My daughter has a lovely voice, a sort of warbling contralto that resonated through the loft. It’s still hard to believe that, only few years ago, she was a member of the high school chorus. For the annual spring concert, the music director always singled her out to perform a solo. My husband and I encouraged her to train with a professional music instructor, but our daughter had no interest in pursuing music. Eventually, she dropped choir altogether and enrolled in shop. She enjoyed working with her hands, but as the weeks went by, my husband and I grew uneasy with her strange creations—an elaborately carved coffin keychain, a large picture frame on which she’d chiseled grinning skulls and a scythe-wielding reaper. At night, while husband slept soundly beside me, I often heard disturbing choral music rumbling from our daughter's bedroom in the basement. I crept downstairs, and when I pressed my ear to her door, I thought I heard her chanting a refrain in a language that sounded ancient, almost ceremonial. Latin? Sanskrit?

Now, after finishing a flat rendition of “Happy Birthday,” she pushed the tray of cupcakes across the counter and told me to make a wish. I leaned forward, but before blowing out the candles, I thought deeply about the nature of my wish. An ordinary divorcee might, I suppose, wish for the restoration of her family, a reconciliation with those friends and neighbors who’d been forced to take sides and to whom she was now estranged, but in the year leading up to my abrupt departure from suburbia, I secretly wished for the opposite of these things and—wonder of wonders!—my wish had been granted. But granted by whom or by what? The universe? God? A carnival of imps and devils? To wish now for the invalidation of my first wish seemed like ingratitude, and from what I could tell the universe was already growing impatient with me. I decided to play it safe and wish for an uneventful conclusion to this evening’s impromptu party.

My daughter, after gobbling two cupcakes and without bothering to wipe the chocolate from her fingertips, reached into her handbag, a great big unwieldy thing that looked like it had been dragged along a boiler room floor, and produced a crumpled pack of menthol cigarettes. With her unvarnished thumb she expertly flicked open a butane lighter the size of her fist and said, “Like my new flamethrower? Oh, you don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I’ll crack a window, okay? They help relax me, Mom.”

It seemed pointless to argue with her, so I leaned back in my seat and asked how she’d managed to gain entry to the apartment. I hadn’t given her a key. She exhaled two jets of smoke from her nostrils and rolled her eyes.

“Duh,” she said, “your maid let me in.”

I nodded, slowly removing the foil liner from a cupcake and snapping off hardened bits of wax from the frosting. Under absolutely no circumstances was the housekeeper allowed to let guests, especially uninvited guests claiming to be my daughter, into this apartment. Had the woman at least asked to see some form of identification? A social security card? A driver’s license? My daughter, who is uninsured and can no longer drive, doesn’t carry a photo ID. And what if a few of my daughter’s friends had tagged along tonight? Would the housekeeper have let those shop goblins in, too, with all of their tattoos and body piercings and animal odors?

The more I thought about this, the more agitated I became. What if, over the past several months, the housekeeper had allowed my ex-husband into the apartment? Or that strange woman from across the hall who keeps asking me to join her bowling team, the Bipolar Rollers? And then there’s the mysterious man I met last summer at the corner cafe. Every morning, before catching the bus, we would chat in line and order our lattes. With those mischievously arched eyebrows, distinguished French fork beard, and that head of thick white hair, he struck me as a devilishly handsome older gentleman. One Friday morning, after the barista confused our orders, he asked if I might like to join him for dinner. Enchanted by his vaguely continental accent, I reluctantly accepted. That same night, at a trendy bistro with a view of the downtown skyline, we drank two bottles of red wine and then, instead of ordering coffee or an after-dinner liqueur, we uncorked a bottle of bubbly back at my apartment. He boldly suggested I lower the lights and put on some soft music. Somehow, he charmed his way into my bed, a clumsy and ultimately regrettable affair on my part. Afterward, during an uncomfortable lull in our conversation, he cast his gaze around the bedroom and recommended the housekeeping agency along the river. I’m sure he was only trying to be helpful. At that time, coming so soon after my acrimonious divorce, the apartment was still a bit—disordered. The piles of unwashed clothes scattered on the floor and the cardboard boxes stacked high against the walls and windows made the place feel claustrophobic, maze-like, purgatorial.

The next morning, while I took a scalding shower, my new friend promptly disappeared. After that he stopped coming to the cafe, but I always hoped he might return to provide some kind of explanation. A silly thing for a woman my age to wish. If one day a guilty-looking man bearing a bouquet of flowers showed up at my door, would the housekeeper politely wave him inside? Would she offer to take his coat? Ask if he’d care for something to drink? Did she even know how to make a proper cocktail? Maybe while cleaning the loft, she’d gotten into the habit of fixing herself a stiff drink or two. I do not mark the bottles. Also, whenever I know my daughter is coming to spy on me, I lock the liquor in a storage unit in the basement, always making sure to re-set the electronic code. Even someone as devious as my little girl can’t figure out how to get in there. It’s a pity when a mother can’t trust her own daughter.

Now, I picked half-heartedly at the chocolate crumbs scattered on the countertop and waited for my daughter to visit the lavatory. When she finally excused herself, I rushed to the wet bar and gathered up the decanter of scotch, the bottle of bourbon, the bitters, even the ice bucket and stainless-steel shaker engraved with my initials. I hid everything at the bottom of a laundry basket in the back of my bedroom closet. Irritated by this inconvenience, I decided to call the housekeeping agency to lodge a complaint. But first a quick call to my ex-husband seemed to be in order. He had no business sending our daughter here to collect evidence against me. Cursing under my breath, I sat at the edge of my bed and dialed the number, but my call went straight to voicemail.

“Dad’s on a date.”

I looked up with a startled gasp.

Smiling in that infuriatingly cryptic way of hers, my daughter stood in the bedroom doorway, her arms crossed, a fresh cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. It was now six o’clock. The loft was glowing red with a winter sunset, and I didn’t like the way the light played on her face. She refused to wear makeup, not even lipstick and eyeshadow. Four years ago, around the time she was starting to change, I voiced my concerns about her appearance. “She’s just experimenting with different expressions of identity.” That’s what my husband said, but to my ears this sounded suspiciously like ideological jargon, the kind of thing he'd picked up from listening to public radio during his morning commute to work.

After taking a deep drag on her cigarette, my daughter showed me a modicum of courtesy by turning her head and exhaling out the door.

“Have you met her yet?” she asked.

I put my phone on the nightstand, calmly folded my hands in my lap, and told her with a smile that a mutual acquaintance from the gym let me know all about the yoga instructor. A fit and attractive young woman, if the rumors were true, but not someone you'd call an intellectual.

My daughter stepped into my room and ran her index finger along the dresser. Behind her the windows rattled from the icy gusts shrieking across the frozen lake, and for the tenth time that day, I dreamed of moving away from this miserable midwestern city of sleet and snow and going someplace warm and sunny.

It then occurred to me that this surprise visit had nothing at all to do with my birthday. My daughter had been looking for an excuse to leave the house. Perfectly understandable, I said. A middle-aged man and a flexible yoga instructor must get pretty noisy at night. And what child wants to hear her father in the throes of passion, screaming out a stranger's name? I told my daughter she was more than welcome to spend the night with me. We could make popcorn, bake cookies, watch a spooky movie.

She inspected her finger for dust and walked into the master bathroom. She directed her gaze at the mirror above the sink and suddenly stiffened. I asked if everything was alright. She switched on the light and leaned forward, her reflection obscured by a line of dark red lipstick defacing the mirror.

Curious, I strode across the room and stood in the doorway. I’ve always been superstitious, an embarrassing vestige from the days when I was compelled to sit in a church pew and listen to the parish priest pound his fists against the pulpit and promise his unrepentant congregants an eternity of inconceivable torments in hell. From him I learned that human nature is fraught with a thousand terrible impulses, the most wicked of which was a child’s lack of honor for her mother and father.

My daughter turned to me and said, “You didn’t do anything to upset the maid, did you, Mom?”

What an odd thing to ask! I explained that I’d never met the woman although I now wondered, as I gazed at the ghastly image in the mirror, if she was an immigrant from some remote mountain village on the edge of a dark forest where the peasants still whispered the old stories and practiced forbidden ancient rites. Oh, I suppose the housekeeper may have had some reason to be irritated with me. In the six months I’d been using the agency, I’d never once left her a tip, not even a small Christmas bonus, but it seemed inconceivable that an employee, sent from a bonded agency, would do anything so disturbing. Not that I was under any obligation to tip her. The agency charged a hefty fee, and I was already way behind on the payments to my therapist.

My daughter ashed in the sink and regarded me again in a strange way.

I laughed. What, did she think I was actually capable of drawing something so diabolical? The lonely graphic designer with a secret flare for the occult? I reached out a hand and with one finger traced the horned creature, half-human, half-goat, drawn in a frenzy of bold red strokes on the mirror. The tube of lipstick was still on the counter, deliberately placed there like a votive candle before the winged figure now leering at us. What name did the cosmetologists give such a distasteful color? Crime Scene? Urban Decay? Dark Fiction?

My daughter flicked her cigarette into the toilet. “Come sit down on the bed, Mom. You don’t look well.”

I backed away from her and with the intensity of a palm reader studied my trembling hand. Why had I touched that thing? Now I was contaminated. I was going dirty my apartment with bad vibes, unclean spirits. I needed to call the agency right away and have that fiendish housekeeper fired for putting a curse on my new home.

My daughter guided me to the bed, her eyes big and black and glassy. I knew then that she had drugged the cupcakes. I could feel the effects starting to kick in, the bugs crawling under my skin. I fell against the pillows and felt a kind of paralysis spread slowly from my fingertips, up my arm, and through the rest of my body.

“I’m going to make some calls, okay, Mom?”

I accused my daughter of poisoning me. I threatened to call the police, but when I tried to reach for the phone on the nightstand, I found that I was unable to move. She looked at me, her lips curling into a smile, and somehow spoke without opening her mouth.

“I’ve been trying to be responsible, Mom, I really have. I’ve been trying to be good. I even have a steady part-time job. Cleaning apartments after school. I’ve had the same job now for almost a year. I thought you’d be proud of me.”

I must have regarded her with a comical expression.

When she finally stopped laughing, she said, “Stay right here. And whatever you do, Mom, don’t go back in that bathroom.”

The moment she closed the bedroom door, I heard the distinctive click of a lock. I wasn’t sure how this was possible since the door locks from the inside. Still pinned to the bed, I asked if housekeepers were in the habit of carrying a Phillips head screwdriver and a set of Allen wrenches when they felt it necessary to tamper with their client's locks. In a much louder voice, in case she was having trouble hearing me through the door, I asked about her work. How many apartments did she clean in a day? Did she find the job rewarding? When she failed to respond, I knew I had to speak more forthrightly, and so in my most heartfelt voice, the one I used to tell my ex-husband that one day I was going to get even with him, I said that I didn’t believe a word of her story. We both knew she was incapable of holding down a job for longer than a week or two. I then congratulated her on having played a terrific prank, but now the joke had run its course and it was time to release Mommy from the bedroom.

That’s when the music started, a frighteningly familiar fugue played at full volume. Since I didn’t own a stereo system, I assumed she’d smuggled a portable speaker into the apartment, one with a subwoofer that could make the paintings and pictures rattle against the walls. Good, I thought, let her blast that nihilistic noise. Sooner or later someone would come to my aid, the superintendent, a neighbor, a sympathetic mother on her way home to face her own little monsters. How many of us were there in the world, how many parents imprisoned in their own homes, living in mortal terror of their children?

It grew dark. Above the music, I could hear bubbling bong hits, coughing, clapping, howling, peals of manic laughter, the sound of a glass shattering against the granite countertop. Soon the bedroom reeked of cigarettes and marijuana. I attempted to roll off the bed so I could crawl across the floor and wedge a wet towel under the door, but I couldn’t lift a finger, couldn’t even blink.

As I stared at the ceiling, I wondered how long it would take before the bedroom door suddenly burst open and a dark figure demanded to know where I’d stashed the liquor. Which of my daughter’s guests would do the honors of interrogating the morose birthday girl? My ex-husband? The yoga instructor? Or perhaps that handsome man from the cafe? Yes, let it be him! Not wanting to spoil the party, I would fully cooperate with my impeccably groomed inquisitor. Maybe, if there were no profanity-laced temper tantrums on my part, no promises of self-abuse, no gleeful threats of suicide, he would even let me join the party. He might fetch a paper cup from the bathroom and pour me a shot of bourbon from a bottle at the bottom of the laundry basket. I imagined him standing before the mirror, the drawing of Baphomet superimposed over his face. Raising his own cup, he would propose a toast. “To daughters!” Then he would tell me that, if I so wished, he could relieve me forever of all my responsibilities as a parent.

But as he leaned over my bed and poured the burning liquid into my mouth, he would stroke my face with his gentle hand and say, “Of course, under circumstances such as these, the best thing to do is accept the fact that children are a curse that can never be broken.”

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