Jillian Read online

  Acclaim for Halle Butler and Jillian

  “[A] claustrophobic, anxiety-inducing book.”

  —Lydia Kiesling, The New Yorker

  “Few authors capture the acidic angst of downtrodden millennials like Butler.”

  —The Huffington Post

  “Droll, scatological, and delightfully subversive.”

  —The Rumpus

  “A frank depiction of modern indecency.”

  —Electric Literature

  “So human that you’ll want to push [the characters] away from you and cuddle them close at the same time.”

  —Flavorwire

  “Outrageous . . . Reads like rubbernecking or a junk-food binge, compelling a horrified fascination and bleak laughter in the face of outrageously painted everyday sadness.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “[A] poison pill of a novel . . . Butler’s aim is perfect, and her touch deft.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] striking debut.”

  —Booklist

  “This book is incredible. The deadpan way it nails what it is to be a human who lies to herself and tells different lies to everyone else makes me want to laugh and scream. It is hilarious and weird, my two favorite qualities in a book.”

  —Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls and Don’t Kiss Me

  “An authentic and beautiful portrait of a self-proclaimed asshole.”

  —Chelsea Martin, author of Even Though I Don’t Miss You

  “Halle Butler’s Jillian is a wry, smart portrait of two women set on separate courses of self-destruction, each of them judging the other on the way down. This is a bold debut, a quick, vicious ride.”

  —Cari Luna, author of The Revolution of Every Day

  “A hilariously brutal tale of a woman destroying herself with cheery selfishness. I laughed myself nauseous watching the people surrounding Jillian struggle between exasperated judgment and aggravated compassion. Never before has a pair of characters made me so sick with hatred and empathy at once. Butler is writing exactly what I want to read.”

  —Jac Jemc, author of A Different Bed Every Time and My Only Wife

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  JILLIAN

  Halle Butler is the author of Jillian and The New Me. She has been named a National Book Award Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and a Granta Best Young American Novelist.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published in the United States of America by Curbside Splendor Publishing 2015

  This edition published in Penguin Books 2020

  Copyright © 2015, 2020 by Halle Butler

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Chapter 3 originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The Nervous Breakdown in 2015 and chapter 5 originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Hobart in 2013.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Butler, Halle, author.

  Title: Jillian / Halle Butler.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Penguin Books, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019041017 (print) | LCCN 2019041018 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9780143135524 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780525507185 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3602.U8716 J55 2020 (print) |

  LCC PS3602.U8716 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041017

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: Lynn Buckley

  Cover typography: based on a design by Rachel Willey

  Cover images: (burn marks) Shutterstock; (cigarette) Nathan Perkel / Gallery Stock

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Acclaim for Halle Butler

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART 1

  1

  Jillian was in the rapture of one of her great musings.

  “But what I really want is to be a personal assistant, or to go door-to-door and help people get organized. Not, like, as a psychologist, but I might be good at that, too. More like helping people get the right bins and sort through their stuff. Just go in and help people get organized.”

  “You really like organizing?” Megan asked. Megan was not listening. She pronounced it flatly. “You really like organizing.”

  “I’m obsessed,” said Jillian. “My house is packed with color-coded boxes and labels and stuff like that.”

  “You’re a collector,” said Megan.

  Jillian burped, a discreet, air-valve release through her mouth. “Ha ha, yeah.”

  The phone rang. Megan picked it up and said, “Good afternoon, doctors’ office.” The woman on the phone asked if this was Dr. Billings’s office. Megan answered in the affirmative.

  “Well, finally,” said the woman. “I left a message on your machine and I did not receive a call within twenty-four hours, as promised.”

  “How may I help you?” asked Megan.

  “I was beginning to think Dr. Billings was a figment of my mind,” said the woman. “Like I was imagining him, and that maybe I had dreamed leaving the message.”

  Megan sniffed.

  “But when I checked my call history just now, I saw that I had really called.” Megan didn’t have the energy.

  “Umm, hello, hello,” said the woman.

  “Yes, how may I help you?” said Megan.

  “I’d like to make an appointment, like I said in my message. Should I just start from the top?”

  “Could I have your name and availability, please?” said Megan. She thought of her current mindset as “allowing the shit to happen.”

  The microwave beeped in the background. The microwave was in the closet where they kept drug samples, and it sat on top of the mini-fridge. People used the mini-fridge to store both lunches and biological samples, side by side. Megan did not like to use the mini-fridge or the microwave. She did not like to think about how the heat from the microwave might combine the side-by-side contents of the mini-fridge.

  She thought about the microwave and the mini-fridge while scheduling the appointment, and she also thought about how people affectionately referred to using the microwave as “nuking.”

  “All right, Mrs. Davies, we’ll see you next Wednesday at t
en o’clock,” said Megan.

  Jillian walked back to her desk from the microwave, holding her lunch. The lunch came in a small plastic tub and had an indeterminate odor.

  Jillian’s desk was large—executive, almost—and made of mahogany-colored laminate. Megan’s desk was small and made of glass and cheap, black metal, and Megan had decorated the glass with a fanciful pattern of coffee splatters, adhesive, and various other dribblings. Megan’s desk was placed in the corner between a fax machine and an oversized, locked trash can. She had a nice view of the wall.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” said Jillian, “I love my job.” She peeled the plastic flap off her lunch and slapped it on her desk with a practiced gesture. “But it’s a dream of mine to work on my own terms. And I think, you know, when a person has a passion, they should follow it.”

  “Mmmm,” said Megan.

  “And since I keep collecting all this organizing stuff, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s a passion, so I’m trying to really listen to it so I can understand what it means for my future.”

  Megan squeezed the bridge of her nose.

  “I’m sorry?” said Jillian.

  “Oh, nothing, I’m sorry. I was talking to my computer.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I do that all the time,” said Jillian. She laughed. “So what do you think of my idea? Do you think about that stuff sometimes?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know about organizers, though,” said Megan. She dropped her voice an octave for the authoritative thrill. “I think sometimes people buy organizers to make themselves feel satisfied with their intentions, rather than to help them organize.”

  “Hmmm, that’s interesting,” said Jillian.

  “It’s just an opinion.”

  “It’s cool how different people are,” said Jillian.

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Megan.

  “So, Miss Megan, what’s your dream job? Go ahead and describe it to me.”

  Jillian was a thirty-five-year-old woman. Megan was twenty-four.

  “Gee, I don’t know,” said Megan. She looked around the office. “I guess this.” She widened her eyes at her keyboard. “I guess I would like to have a job that’s easy like this, but maybe with better pay and fewer hours.”

  “Awww,” said Jillian.

  “What?” said Megan.

  “We do hard work.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Megan threw her skirt on the floor and said, “Jillian.”

  Her boyfriend, Randy, was making dinner. He was cutting a zucchini into slices and laying the slices on top of a frozen cheese pizza.

  “Today she burped in the middle of a sentence,” said Megan. “Like it was a word in her sentence.”

  “Ha ha,” said Randy. Megan leaned against the kitchen sink.

  “JILLIAN!” said Megan, raising her arms.

  “Yeesh,” said Randy.

  “She thinks she’s going to become a personal organizer.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” said Randy.

  “Yes you do.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” said Randy.

  “When she told me about it, it occurred to me to say, ‘Well, never in all my life!’”

  Megan thought about this and tried to sit on the edge of the sink. “I don’t really know why I wanted to say that. I just want to do my work without having to listen to her dreams.” Megan gestured again. “I don’t want to stress out about her dreams.”

  “It’s a really small office, right?” her boyfriend asked. “So, you’re really trapped in there.”

  “Completely trapped.”

  Megan kept thinking about Jillian and tried to sit on the edge of the sink, but fell backward into it. She hit her head on the aluminum cabinets. Randy heard this, along with the noise of some dishes.

  “You all right?” asked Randy.

  Randy walked to the sink, which was attached to the wall shared with the living room. Megan started shaking and said she thought she might throw up. He put his arms around her and lifted her out of the sink. When he looked down into the sink, he cringed.

  “I fell on that knife,” said Megan.

  “You sure did,” said Randy.

  He walked her through the living room while assuring her that she would be fine. Megan’s knees jiggled.

  “Here, lie down,” he said. Megan got on her stomach on the bed and Randy pulled her tights down. He looked over at the pile of clothing in the corner of their small, unlit bedroom, hoping to see a pair of sweatpants in the wad.

  “I’m going to get something for this,” he said.

  “Did I cut myself?” asked Megan.

  “You did,” he said.

  “I thought so,” she said, and then nearly fainted.

  Randy got up from his squat beside the bed and walked to the kitchen. Megan continued to lie on the bed on her stomach, her face pointed at the clothing wad. In the kitchen, where he was getting a bowl of warm water and a roll of masking tape, Randy saw the knife she’d sat on. It was surrounded by watery blood. Next to the knife, floating in a teacup, was a small crouton.

  He went to the bathroom to dry-heave and get gauze, Neosporin, and Tylenol.

  When he got back to the bedroom, she was sobbing. He set his things on the nightstand and took a moment to look at the underwear around Megan’s ankles.

  “Hey, it’s not that bad,” he said. The gash was deep, but not incredibly bloody. He rinsed and dried it, then covered it with a quarter of the tube of Neosporin.

  “It really hurts,” she said.

  “I know, I know,” he said. He rubbed her head for a minute. “Do you still want me to make that pizza?”

  “What? No. Maybe. Maybe I’ll want that pizza later,” she said. “You decide, I don’t know.”

  “Okay, I’ll decide,” he said. He wiped her nose and eyes with the extra gauze. She looked like a disgusting dead sea creature. Randy began to smile and wipe the stray hairs out of her face.

  “My ass hurts so much,” she sobbed.

  “I know it does, honey,” he said.

  Megan remembered what she had been talking about when she slid into the sink and said, “Jillian is such a fucking idiot!”

  “I know, honey,” said Randy. “She’s a total idiot.”

  “No, I’m serious,” she cried. “This is serious!”

  “Of course it is,” said Randy.

  “I get a dangerous sense of foreboding when I’m around her.” Megan swallowed some spit. “She’s seeping into me! Everything she says and does, whenever she opens her mouth!”

  Randy nodded and rubbed Megan’s ears. “I know.”

  “But I won’t let her get to me.”

  “That’s good. You should really try to let this all go, it’s not good for you. You talk about her every day. I’m so happy you’re going to brush it off, that’s really mature.”

  Megan omitted his statement from her mind. “I’ll turn the tables,” she said. “I’ll enjoy it. Every stupid idea she has is mine now. I’ll savor it, that’s what I’ll do.”

  Randy frowned and balled up the snot gauze before tossing it onto the nightstand.

  * * *

  • • •

  The bus pulled up to the eight-story medical building and Megan had her usual fantasy about remaining onboard until the end of the line, but she heaved herself toward the doors of the bus anyway. Slumping along, sort of throwing her feet one after the other, she crossed the street, entered the building, rode the elevator, walked down the hallway, and then stood facing her office door. She stared at it. Then she went inside and there was Jillian.

  “Hey, Miss Megan!”

  “Hey,” said Megan.

  “How was your night, do anything fun? Anything new?”

  “Nothing’s really changed since
yesterday, no,” said Megan. Megan put her knee on her chair and opened Citrix, the intranet portal that connected her office with the hospital. Citrix was complex and opaque, and to understand it fully a person would probably need to attend a three-day regional seminar. Megan entered her secret username, “Megan,” and her secret password, “password.”

  “Well, if you don’t have any news, let me tell you about my crazy night.” Jillian separated out the words “crazy” and “night.” Megan tried to ease her weight slowly down on her injured haunch.

  “I am going to get a dog and start my own business,” said Jillian.

  “Oh yeah?” said Megan.

  “Oh yeah. Do you want to see the dog?”

  Megan did not want to see the dog, but she agreed anyway. She walked the two paces to Jillian’s desk and stood there with her arms crossed. Let’s see this fucking dog, you fucking moron.

  “She’s a special needs puppy,” breathed Jillian. “And she’s dog of the day. It’s a two-hundred-dollar adoption fee. I don’t really have that much, but I want her so, so bad. Isn’t she cute?”

  They both took a second to admire the dog. Megan thought it was a completely idiotic idea. She was, in some ways, ethically opposed to pet ownership.

  “Yeah, she’s cute. But the adoption fees are to make sure the new owners can afford dog food and vet bills.” Megan cleared her throat and walked back to her desk. Her foot slipped out of her shoe. “And, if she really is a special needs dog, you know the vet bills are gonna be high. Just saying, might not be the best dog for you. Or, maybe it’s not the best time to get a dog. You have to plan for that stuff.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure my little boy really wants a dog, and I think the most important thing for a special needs dog to have is love.”

  Oh my god, this dog is going to die within a week, thought Megan.

  “Oh, and I have to tell you about my idea to work from home.”

  Just as a thought experiment, Megan scanned the room for potential weapons. Jillian’s voice came in and out of focus.

  “. . . software I can . . . medical coding from . . . that cool?? . . . I can take . . . little companion!”