a collection of short stories
Mazie Louise Montgomery
by Dicey Brown Media Publications
CELEBRITY
Karen Ashburner
First Edition Chapbook Published 2003
by Dicey Books
Staten Island, New York
Names, characters, places, and incidents of these poems are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
DICEY BOOKS
Manufactured in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Copyright © 2003 by Karen Ashburner
All rights reserved
First Edition
ACKOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which certain stories of this collection first appeared: “In That Place on the Corner,” Absinthe Literary Review, Summer 2002. “Celebrity,” WordRiot, Fall 2002. “The Grassy Median,” The Muse Apprentice Guild, Fall 2003. And “Eggs, Murder, Sex, and Baseball,” the New Delta Review, Fall 2001.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2002096879
ISBN 0-9723415-1-X
CONTENTS
IN THAT PLACE ON THE CORNER
CELEBRITY
CACTUS STATUE
THE GRASSY MEDIAN
EGSS, MURDER, SEX AND BASEBALL
IN THAT PLACE ON THE CORNER
I SAW YOU leaning into my view, eyeing the clock on the wall behind the bar and flipping your wrist, just to check, just to make sure that all was right and I was still there, still looking back in your direction.
I felt your hand, felt your palm glide and your fingers search for the small of my back, that spot just under the cotton of my shirt as you walked by, holding the drink you bought for that girl, the skinny one with the nails and the hair and the dress, the black dress I would never wear because it dips too low and clings too tightly to hips that are so much smaller than my own.
And I know what you'll say, since it's all the same and I've heard it before, not from you but from someone just like, who sat on that very stool, and wrapped the same charm in the same swollen words that he would never think to say to the girl who came on his arm, the one who left in a hurry, down the stairs, banging the door against the wall.
It's all so easy, don't you think?
To wait for the old man next to me to finish his beer and stumble off, since he'll be gone too long and need help telling the skirts from the pants on the old door that too many drunks have scratched their names into as they waited to pee, not noticing the spot on their crotch as they walked away, trying too hard to prove that they're fine to drive and not too drunk to bring someone home and make the bed shake.
And you'll scoot over, sly and smooth, like you've practiced at home in the corner of your basement at the portable bar your dad made out of plywood and black plastic veneer. The same bar where he sat drinking too many too-dry martinis with too many olives and dreamed of the pool table he would never own, back when he was single, right after the divorce, when he still cared about the half naked women in string bikinis parading by his sliding glass doors at his new condo complex, the one that put up the sign on Highway 11 in the summer of '76.
Stay single, it said. Stay with us.
Then I'll look over, casual at first, like I don't really know, but I'll give you that smile, the one my mother taught me years ago. And you'll say “Hey,” just to get the ball rolling and I'll say “Hey” back, and just for a second, I will lose that line of my near perfect vision, so that all I see is your nose and mouth when I look at your eyes, and your eyes and ears when I look at your mouth.
And then we'll talk, about the world in general and you in particular and how I'm the only one who seems to understand. And I'll ask about her, like I don't really care, but you know the truth and so do I because it's already started. And she knows it, like me, hates it, like me, struggles like me to make you look as she leans over him-a strange man to her, a best friend to you, the friend who came along to help blow out your candles, to handle your girl and run his hand up her waist when you found the one who would do for the night.
Then I'll see you next month in the gym on my street and I'll want to say “Hey” and you'll want to ignore, just enough to make me notice, while you lift and you curl, make your smooth palms rough, make it look like you work. All in an effort to attract a girl while you step, step, step on a never-ending staircase, mechanical and timed, all drunk with sweat, just like you were on the night I said yes.
CELEBRITY
WHEN THE PLANE touches down in Memphis, Robert says maybe we should stay for a while. Having spent the hour-long flight from Atlanta flipping through the pages of my Southern Living magazine, he has stopped on an article about the annual candlelight vigil held for Elvis every year at Graceland. Looking at a picture of three smiling mourners holding candles he reads the caption to me, 'Elvis fans, left to right, Amanda Akins, Maryann Johnson and Richard Davis, all 19 years old and from Memphis, came to pay their respects at the 2001 vigil.'
“I'd like to light one of those candles,” he says.
“One wake in a week isn't enough for you?” I ask.
“It's not a wake. The body is already buried.”
I snatch the magazine from him. “I know the body's buried,” I say. “It's Elvis. And it's creepy. Thousands of people, holding candles, walking by a dead man they never knew.”
“My point exactly.”
Pointing to an article on the opposite page I say, “Look, we can romanticize our garden by placing a floating candle in a birdbath or a fishpond.”
“Maybe there's a birdbath at Graceland.”
“Look, just look at the picture, Robert. We can make tree lights out of candles and mason jars. All we have to do is twirl a copper wire around the mouth of an old mason jar, put a candle in it and hang it from a limb. Easy. A mason jar, copper wire, and glass beads for decoration.”
Robert looks at the picture. “Doesn't look too easy to me,” he says.
“Why?”
“Where do you buy glass beads?”
“That's not important. What's important is that we could hang these jars in the garden, light them at night, and have a romantic picnic. Couldn't you see them glowing, swaying above our heads?”
Robert looks at me. “Katherine, when are we ever in our garden at night?”
The plane is racing down the runway like a dragster on a speedway. I imagine a perfect white parachute popping out from the back, its mass of cord spinning, around and around. Reflectors shoot by the row of small oval windows like blue bullets. The engines roar and I cover my ears until the plane begins to slow and the engines are quiet once again.
“You have no imagination,” I say, “you fixate on things that aren't important. We wouldn't need the beads. The beads just aren't important.”
“Katherine, the beads are what make the mason jar a tree light, and not a mason jar hanging from a tree. Those are fancy glass beads. You can't just walk into Wal-Mart and buy those. A trip to Graceland, now that sounds easy. Get off the plane, get in a car, drive to Graceland. Easy.”
“Wal-Mart sells beads.”
“Wal-Mart doesn't sell those beads. You need a specialty store. Someone's very own bead store, where they sell nothing but beads. Like "Fan City" just sells fans. No flashlights or butane stoves or rifles or bathroom supplies. Just fans.”
“Robert, what are you talking about?”
“I'm talking about the fact that last year there was a woman in some small town selling insurance, dreaming about the day she would own a bead store because she hates selling insurance, and six months later she went to the bank, took out a loan, opened up a store, and in the corner of that store, in a Plexiglas box that looks like it should hold fishing tackle or matchbox cars or something, in that funny looking box are your glass beads, not in the craft section of Wal-Mart, but in that particular specialty store. That's the trick.”
The plane reaches the end of the runway and makes the turn toward the terminal. A small man in an orange vest waves a flashlight in ninety-degree angles, directing the plane toward the gate. I write the numbers 15 and 11 in a straight line down my thumb with a black felt tip marker and wonder if Elvis was flown anywhere while he was dead, like Howard Hughes or the Kennedy brothers.
“I was six,” I say, “the day Kenny Wayne Parker held me against the fence on the playground, called me Priscilla, and demanded that I kiss him on the lips.”
Robert looks at me, expectantly. “Did you kiss him?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, “and an hour later Elvis was dead.”
“It was your fault then,” Robert says. “You killed Elvis.” And I say of course it wasn't, don't be stupid, flip through your silly magazine and tell me how I should host my next pumpkin painting party.
“That's not funny,” Robert says. “I was just trying to keep myself entertained.”
The flight attendant walks to the front of the plane and chirps into the intercom. We are stuck in a line. We are waiting our turn. When the plane arrives at the gate we will all remain seated until the plane comes to a full and complete stop. She emphasizes “full” and “complete.” She smiles as she speaks, smiles as she replaces the microphone, smiles at Robert as she walks back down the aisle. I turn in my seat and watch her from behind. Robert clears his throat and when I turn back around he is watching me, his brows arched.
“Don't smile at me like that,” I say.
“I'm not smiling,” he says.
Turning to Robert I say, “Tell me something funny about your father.”
“Well, he could have been your grandfather.”
“True, but not very funny.”
“He made me go to business school, but that's not exactly funny either, is it?”
I think about the belly of the plane, filled with luggage and live-animal containers. I picture John Davidson or Charles Nelson Reilly in a wooden box marked Human Remains. Dead celebrities fly everywhere.
“My dad made me watch game shows in the basement with him when I was a kid,” I say.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” Robert asks.
“Not funny, exactly, maybe just a little strange,” I say.
“A little strange?”
“Maybe a lot strange.”
Robert is silent for a moment and I know he's thinking about the one time I took him home to Cleveland, the time my father ate sardines from a can at the dinner table and fed the dog peanut butter and mayonnaise crackers. My mother made a roast and a pot of Navy beans. Robert ate his plate clean.
“What kind of game shows?” he asks.
“Match Game, Hollywood Squares, Ten Thousand Dollar Pyramid,” I say.
“Oh.”
“We even played the board games.”
“Now that's some creepy-ass shit, Katherine.”
“It's not either. He said I could learn a lesson. He said game shows were like life.”
“Katherine, how are game shows like life?”
“I…don't know, Robert. What the hell, I never knew.”
“Okay,” says Robert, “here's something for you. When I was thirteen, my father walked into a bank with me and told the teller, 'I'm a professor of Modern History at Cal Poly Tech and I expect to be taken seriously.'
“Sounds prissy to me,” I say.
“At least he didn't keep me locked in the basement,” he says.
“I wasn't locked in.”
“I'll bet he wouldn't have let you go if you had asked.”
I try to imagine my father, how he looked when we played those games, the color of his hair, the sound of his voice. But the only image I can summon is the old black and white photo of him I keep on my mantle. The photo was taken when he was just a boy, a teenager in the Navy, striding down a sidewalk in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is too thin and the uniform too big, his gaze is stern. He is walking briskly, carrying a bag under his arm, looking to someone or something off in the distance. His face looks more like thirty than nineteen but I know the photo was taken in June of 1941, six months before his birthday and the attack on Pearl Harbor. The crystal blue water of Hawaii does not show, there are no pretty girls in the background, only more sailors, drifting about in the street as if looking for something to do.
“Robert, did you ever watch The Hollywood Squares?” I ask.
“Off and on.”
“My father never missed an episode. Kept a journal of the dialogue between Paul Lynde and Peter Marshall.”
“This just gets better and better,” he says.
“He made notes about the colors of the set in the margins, whether or not Marshall let the contestant make a joke, who got in the last word before commercial.”
“Guarding his territory,” Robert says.
“True,” I say.
“Elvis would have been great in the center square,” says Robert.
“Elvis wasn't center square material,” I say.
“Sure he was.”
“The Hollywood Squares was a comedy show, Robert. Elvis wasn't funny.”
“What's funnier than a man in a white leather pantsuit, Katherine?”
“They wouldn't have let him wear the suit on the show.”
“What are you talking about? They would have begged him to wear that suit. The suit was as much an icon as he was.”
“You can't bring your business ideals into this, Robert. It doesn't work that way.”
“Why not? Game shows aren't big business?”
“No.”
“Then what are they?”
“I don't know.”
“You don't have an answer,” he says.
“I don't know, they're...like life,” I say.
“Game shows are fake, Katherine. How are game shows ever like life?”
“I don't know, maybe…”
“Yes?”
“Well, I don't know, maybe there's some kind of parallel between notoriety and respect.”
“Who told you that?”
I look out the window. “My father.”
“Oh,” says Robert.
Toward the front of the plane a woman begins to complain. All of this is taking too long. She is worried about making her connecting flight. Who will retrieve her dog from underneath? He must be dehydrated by now. The man sitting beside her agrees. Dogs were not meant to fly.
Robert continues, “But couldn't Elvis have been in the center square, just once?”
“No,” I say.
“Then who?”
“You want a name?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Brett Sommers, McLean Stevenson, Fannie Flag…”
“But not Elvis.”
“No, Robert.”
“How about The Match Game? Wasn't Elvis on That one?”
“You're thinking of Richard Dawson. Elvis was too messed up to fill in the blanks. The contestants would have hated him.”
Robert rolls his eyes at me.
“It's true,” I say, shifting in my seat. “Let's pretend I'm the host.”
“Okay,” says Robert, “let's pretend.”
“I'm Gene Rayburn and I say 'Thank blank. What do You say?””
“I'd say, only you would know the name of a nineteen seventies game show host,” says Robert.
“Just answer the question,” I say. “Thank blank. What's your answer?”
Robert runs a smooth finger down my thumb and into my palm. “The 15-11 combination is a new one,” he says, “what does it mean?”
“It means OK,” I say.
“Well,” he says, “you can't argue with that.”
“No,” I say, “you certainly can't.”
“Good thing you write that stuff in code, otherwise people might think you're crazy.”
“Never mind my craziness,” I say. “The question, Robert. Thank blank.”
“God,” says Robert.
“See, that's the answer a contestant would expect a guest celebrity to say. But Elvis would say something dumb.”
“Like what?”
“Like… drugs.”
“Elvis would say 'thank drugs' instead of 'thank God'?”
“Yes.”
Robert shakes his head and flips to an article entitled “Expert Advice on Buying Pansies,” puts his finger down and pretends to read. I write more numbers in the palm of my hand. “5-12-22-9-19 spells Elvis,” I say to myself.
The plane starts to move again. Another small man in a reflective vest, more ninety degree angles. More speed. An announcement from the captain. The weather in Memphis is perfect, just a light jacket is all we'll need.
Robert asks, “Do you think John Davidson was pissed off when he wasn't chosen as a regular on The All-New Hollywood Squares?”
“Just when you get your teeth their most white, Hollywood takes you to bed and turns you into a whore.”
Robert closes the magazine and slides it into my purse. “You need to look for more beauty in the world, Katherine. It's a natural instinct you're fighting.” To my silence he adds, “Just look at Graceland. Beauty in its most elemental form.”
“Graceland always seemed unfinished to me,” I say.
“It's a nineteen seventies marvel of interior design. We should go see it. We may never get this chance again.”
“Graceland is frozen in the time of yellow shag carpet and green refrigerators. Besides, I don't like Elvis; he let himself get fat.”
“You can't forgive a man for getting fat?”
“I've always felt sorry for Lisa Marie. A daughter shouldn't have to live with a memory like that,” I say.
Robert says I shouldn't be so hard on the man. “One day you wake up and find out your father is human. It happens.” He traces the numbers on my palm with the tip of his index finger, drawing tiny circles around each number. “If I were the host,” he says, “and I said 'blank bed,' what would you say?”
“I'd say you could never have been Gene Rayburn.”
Robert holds my gaze, something he's very good at, and I think about the first time I saw him, at a restaurant six blocks down from my apartment. He had on long black coat, soft and thick, made of lamb's wool, and carried a worn leather briefcase in his hand. I watched him walk over to my table, full of ease and comfort. I had on a pair of old Levis and a red-and-white striped cotton blouse. I wore red Converse tennis shoes and carried a scarlet leather handbag. Ignoring my date he said, 'What's going to become of us now?' and I answered, 'you look very old and rich but in a nice kind of way.'
Robert kisses my palm. “Blank bed. What would you say?”
“Death,” I say, which is completely typical of me. Robert smiles.“That's my girl,” he says, and I have to wonder if he will ever get tired of someone so predictable.
The plane stops abruptly at the gate and twenty-five passengers stand at once to retrieve luggage from the overhead compartment.
“I don't know why people do this,” I say. “Now we will all stand here in this tiny aisle until they are ready to open the door and let us out.”
Robert's long arms are extended into the overhead compartment; there are people directly ahead of us and behind us. The plane is starting to smell of impatience.
“C'mon, Katherine,” he says. “Let's go. Let's go see Graceland.”
“We don't have enough time,” I say. “We'll miss our connecting flight.” The line finally starts to move, slowly. I take one step forward. I've lost sight of the lady with the dog problem.
“We can rent a car,” he says.
“My mother will be waiting at the airport.”
The line of people moves faster. Robert grabs our bags.
“We can call her.”
“No.”
As we enter the terminal, an airport employee at the ticket desk picks up an intercom, “Enjoy your stay in Memphis,” she says brightly, 'but don't become distracted. It's an easy thing to do in Memphis this time of year.”
Robert and I both stop.
“What an odd airport,” I say.
“Katherine, now is the perfect time to do it, we're here. You're always saying I'm not spontaneous enough.”
“Robert,” I say, “it's five o'clock. We are supposed to be in Cleveland at eight. My father is being buried the day after tomorrow. This is not the time to be spontaneous.”
“This is the perfect time to be spontaneous. Your father isn't going anywhere.”
I say nothing, only look away and nod. At the far side of the terminal I notice a man and three children, two older girls and one young boy. The man is on his knees, wiping the boy's face with a tissue. The girls are standing beside him, looking bored and out of place.
“When I was sixteen,” I finally say, “my father showed me pictures of the three children he had with his ex-wife. I had never met them. Two girls and one boy, only the boy didn't look anything like the girls. He was dark and plump and the girls were fair-skinned and thin. My father called the boy a mistake and made me always promise I would marry for love.”
Robert says nothing.
“I said, 'Okay, but I plan to never get married,' and when he asked 'Why not' I said, 'Because I don't want to get stuck,' and he said 'Don't talk crap, Katherine, decent women have the brains to stick up for themselves and get out when they need to.'”
Robert pulls me to him. “You are a gorgeous creature, I'm sorry.”
“Stop it,” I say. “You're going to make me cry.”
“We have to carry this through,” he whispers into my ear. “I've already become distracted.”
And, looking over Robert's shoulder, I say to him, “I've never seen so many Federal Express planes in one place, have you?”
AN HOUR LATER we drive a rented Chevrolet toward Elvis Presley Boulevard where we heard Dr. Nick had a show about his life with Elvis. Dr. Nick was Elvis's personal physician, supplied big “E” with the drugs and now has a traveling show called “Dr. Nick's Memories of Elvis.” He takes the “TCB” necklace and Elvis' Shelby County Sheriff's badge from casino to casino. It's his small effort to show the people what Elvis had meant.
“I want to see the medicine bag,” says Robert, “and the prescription bottles.”
“Dr. Nick had a thing for Priscilla,” I say.
“A thing?”
“Yeah, you know, a love thing. That's why he loaded Elvis up with drugs.”
“You think that Dr. Nick had a love thing for Priscilla.”
“Yes.”
“And that's why Elvis got hooked on prescription drugs. Because Dr. Nick wanted Priscilla all to himself.”
“Yeah.”
“You can believe that,” Robert says, “but you can't believe Elvis was center square.”
“Yeah,” I say, “it's funny what people will believe.”
We are bouncing through downtown Memphis. Robert says nothing, only stares at me with a silly grin.
“I want to see the bottles too,” I finally say.
AT THE GRAVESIDE Robert lights a candle lit by a candle lit by the eternal flame at Presley's grave and we stand in line for six hours, waiting to walk past the King. Graceland ushers, dressed in white and carrying solemn faces, hand out fliers. I take one and read it out loud to Robert, “Please avoid loud talking or laughter or any other behavior that might be offensive to, or unappreciated by, those who take this tribute seriously.”
As the line moves forward a woman calling herself Mary hands out photocopies of a 1980 tabloid article that claimed Elvis had been sighted in St. Louis selling shoes at a store in the Galleria. “I'm the mother of the King,” she says to me. “Would you like to buy a carnation for the grave?” I say yes and hand the woman a dollar as a midget Elvis standing in front of Robert weeps into a red bandana, grabs my arm and says, “It seems like yesterday.”
I say it often seems like yesterday.
Robert asks, “What is your most profound memory of Elvis.”
I think about Sam Phillips, brokering Elvis to the Colonel, about Priscilla, in her white wedding gown and heavy black eyeliner, about Elvis, kicking bricks for his black belt in a hotel room. But mostly I think about Lisa Marie, kissing a boy like Kenny Wayne, thinking about her daddy lying dead on the bathroom floor.
“The 1968 Special,” I say. “When Elvis was swarthy.”
In response Robert says, “I've never heard you use the word swarthy.”
When we got in line it was the fifteenth of August, as we leave Memphis it is the sixteenth. Neither of us has slept. “Do you want to get a hotel room?” Robert asks.
“No,” I say, “I'd like to go home now.”
So we drive on, our used candles in the back seat, and eventually arrive at my mother's split-level ranch. When we knock on the door it is late, but she is happy to see us, and she hugs me tight. “Whatever shall I do without him?” she asks. And I can only answer back, “I don't know.”
WHEN I WAKE UP it is daylight and Robert is leaning against the window, my mother's heavy Damask curtains lying limp against his side. He has dressed already, or at least halfway so, in black cotton socks and a white button-down shirt which is hanging over his boxers. Hearing me stir, he says, “I was getting dressed, but now that you are up I might just climb back in with you.”
“Don't,” I say. “I couldn't possibly. My mother.”
“What about her?” he asks. “She is downstairs cooking breakfast, fussing over the dress you brought.”
“And I'm sure at any moment she will come busting through here, holding something more appropriate to wear to a funeral.”
Robert walks over to me and sits at my bedside. Taking my hand in his he says, “You have such cold hands. You always have such exquisitely cold hands. Let me warm them for you.”
I let him take my hands in his. He looks at my palms. “No numbers today?” he asks.
“No numbers,” I say.
He begins to rub, gently. I do not speak.
“There is a story I remember,” he says, “a story by Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, I think, and in it the main character says to his wife, 'I'd like to destroy you a few times in bed.' Do you know that story, Katherine?”
“Yes,” I say, “and do you know what she said in return, the wife?”
“I can't remember.”
“She says, 'that's the good destruction,'”
“Yes,” he says, wrapping a hand around my neck, letting the tips of his fingers caress the hairline at my neck as his thumb traces a line from my chin to my chest, “the good destruction.”
“But Hemingway's men were too brutal,” I say.
“But just once, I would like to be that man,” he says. “Brutal and strong. I would like to destroy you in bed and then order up a whiskey soda. But here I am in my six dollar hair cut and my oxford shirt, rubbing your cold hands.”
“I like your oxford shirts,” I say.
He strokes my cheek with his knuckles. “Jesus, Katherine,” he says, “You're so young and pretty. I'm too old for you. What do you want with an old man like me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We're not right for each other. Complete opposites.”
“My father was older than my mother,” I say.
“And now she's alone,” he says.
“You're worried that I'll be alone one day?”
“It's not like that-”
“Go to hell, Robert.”
“You're tired.”
“You look pleased with yourself. Why don't you go back to your office and bark orders to your secretary. I don't need you here.”
He watches me in silence, grabs his pants from a hanger and puts them on. He tucks in his shirt, belts his pants. “I'll be downstairs, helping your mother with breakfast.”
“Robert,” I say. He stops at the door. “You make things so difficult for me. I'm stuck.”
“Come downstairs and eat,” he says, then adds, “Never mind what I said before Katherine, you are the love of my life.”
I pull the covers over my head and feel comforted when I hear him downstairs; the low rumble of his voice making love to my sad mother.
THREE DAYS AND sixteen hours later Robert strains his back lifting my suitcase into the trunk of the Chevrolet and claims he saw the face of Jesus on the decorative flag my mother hung on the front porch.
“It's a horn of plenty and a pumpkin scarecrow,” I say.
Robert moves next to me but says nothing. He places his hands, palm side down, on his lower back and stretches himself backward, arching his back like a dancer.
My mother hands me a stack of my father's game show journals. “Here,” she says, “you might enjoy looking at these. I have no use for them.”
I move to the front stoop, sit down, and thumb through them one by one. I find notes about the shows but also notes about me, how I performed, how I looked, the color of my hair. I find notes about my mother and her roast beef, the silk dresses and mink coats she kept hanging on a rack in the spare bedroom, how she kept them tightly wrapped in thin, plastic dry-cleaner bags, about the dog and how he liked to lick peanut butter off my mother's silver spoons. On the first page in journal fifteen I find a note that says: '1980-81, the Vegas Season. At last Paul Lynde and Peter Marshal have equal billing. Vegas is the true equalizer.
I ask Robert, “Did you know that the last year of The Hollywood Squares was filmed in Las Vegas?”
“You see,” he says, “Elvis could have been a part of that.”
“He was already dead,” my mother says.
I begin to think that it is the power vs. player, father vs. daughter. History seems vaguely aware of whether you were the permanent host or the fill-in, a regular or a semi-regular square, an honest contestant or a starving actor trying to score a big break. But there is also fame in being not quite good enough, not quite perfect.
Mother says, “It's such a shame we had to see each other under such awful circumstances. Maybe you should come home more often now that Daddy's gone.”
“Yes,” I say and for a moment I think about the Japanese tourists in line at the vigil, snapping pictures of Larry Geller, Elvis' hairdresser and personal spiritual advisor.
As we stand in the driveway, I ask Mother if she ever told anyone outside the family about Elvis laying hands on her side and healing her addiction to diet pills.
“Once,” she says, “I told a woman selling carnations as I was waiting in line at the annual candlelight vigil, right after Reagan was shot. But I don't think she believed me.”
I nod, hug my mother goodbye, and think about the fact that the Graceland my mother saw in the eighties was the same one I saw three days ago: strangely unique, unfinished, filled with celebrity and bathed in white.
CACTUS STATUE
THIS IS WHAT Jackie wore to Dan's annual office Christmas party three months after they became engaged: a cropped, bright red cashmere sweater with rhinestone buttons and a removable rabbit collar, a black leather miniskirt, two inch pumps, sexy, yet sturdy enough for dancing, and a miniature black satin backpack to keep her hands free. She dyed her brown hair auburn and spiked it with chunky blonde streaks. She was twenty-four, and had danced with two junior partners, a legal clerk, and a janitor named Sam.
“So?” Dan said when they got back to his apartment. “Did you have fun?”
“I don't know who Sam is,” said Jackie. “But he sure can dance.”
“Sam is the janitor,” said Dan. He pulled her to him and stroked the soft suede of her skirt. “I love your hair this color,” he said, “it makes me think I'm with a different girl. And I especially like this skirt.”
SIX MONTHS LATER, after receiving some last minute matrimonial advice from Reverend Joseph, Jackie spends the last thirty minutes of her wedding reception locked in a VFW-hall bathroom marked Bridal Party Only. As the band plays the “bunny hop” song in the background, her Uncle Lewis tries to sing the lyrics through the PA system her father rented from Party City, USA, only Lewis can't remember the words and Jackie can hear her father screaming, “No, no, that's not it. You're singing the hokey pokey.”
Jackie can hear the group of women talking in the hallway: the matriarch, the sister, and the aunt. Feedback pierces the air as Jackie's father tries to take the microphone away from Lewis. A commotion ensues yet the women stay calm. Jackie flips through the most recent edition of How to Plan the Perfect Honeymoon, a book given to her as a wedding gift from Sophia Gilbert. On page 125 she reads the following:
“The world is too much with us,” the poet Wordsworth once wrote, and many couples undergoing the rigors of planning a wedding will agree. The months leading up to the big event can be a pressure cooker of to-do lists, scheduling conflicts, and lack of time. It is not uncommon to yearn for a honeymoon of serenity and peace.
As she reads, Jackie realizes that she can't quite remember who Sophia Gilbert is, and finally decides that she is either the second cousin who kissed her stepbrother in the attic, or her father's legal secretary. Since some of the pages are dog-eared and the back cover is ripped, Jackie forgives herself the lapse in memory.
From the hallway Jackie hears her aunt say, “Dottie, it's the most open and shut case of post-wedding depression I've ever seen.”
“Judy, don't be silly,” says her mother, “post-wedding depression takes a year to set in. It's obviously just a slight case of marriage shock.”
“I've read that it's not boredom, time, or a bad relationship that causes a wife to walk out,” says her sister, “it's the institution itself.” A second or two of silence follows and Jackie hears her sister ask, “What the hell are you all staring at? It's true. Ask Jackie.”
“Frances,” says her mother, “that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.”
Ten years from now Jackie will tell her therapist she remembers making two colossal mistakes: allowing Dan's brother to kiss the bride, and telling her mother-in-law that as a fifteen year old exchange student in the Dominican Republic she lost her virginity to an Argentinean deck hand named Alejándro Gobierno.
“You see,” says her aunt, “this is why I never got married. I can't handle the myriad of hidden constraints. Within minutes of saying “I do” a perfectly rational woman is reduced to this.” Jackie imagines her Aunt Judy's long slender arms extended, elbows bent, palms turned upward, sixteen foldout banquet tables filled to capacity at her back. The image reminds Jackie of a statue she saw at a woman's museum in Dallas, Texas; an ivory colored woman rising from a cactus, her arms extended to either side, grasping at the plant's prickly branches.
To this Jackie's mother asks, “What's a myriad?”
“I think it's Spanish for giant squid,” says her sister.
“No,” says her mother, “it's Spanish for Wednesday.”
“That's Miércoles,” says her aunt.
Jackie listens to the group as she reads from page 36:
The Male Wardrobe Checklist: 5 underpants, 5 undershirts, 5 pair of socks, 3 pair of slacks, 2 coordinated jackets, 1 suit, 3-5 dress shirts, 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of pajamas, 1 bathing suit, 1 pair of shorts, belts, cufflinks, and 1 umbrella.
“Then what's Spanish for giant squid?” asks her sister.
“Calamar gigante,” Jackie finally says.
“Jackie, how in the hell do you know that?”
“Mother sent me to a bad Spanish tutor,” says Jackie. “Instead of teaching me to say '¿cómo te llamas' he taught me to say '¿Hay alguna librería homosexual?”
“That doesn't sound good to me,” says her mother.
“Dottie,” says her aunt, “I doubt Jackie ever needs to know how to find the gay bookshop.”
Jackie thinks about the useless Spanish terms she knows: la cystitis, el diafragma, la píldora. Jackie wonders how, if stranded once again in the D.R., she could work these three phrases into a sentence: 'Excuse me, but I think I have cystitis from my diaphragm, can you write me a prescription for the pill instead?'
Jackie hears male voices, bits of conversation float into the bathroom: Dan wanting to know why, her father wanting more Crown Royal, her uncle wanting to dance.
A loud knock on the door and her mother shouts, “There's expectation in everything, Jackie. There's no reason to be afraid. You're married now, get out here and join the fun.”
“Oh, that's convincing,” says her aunt. “If you ask me, this is the only sane thing Jackie has done in the past couple of months.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” says her father. “She's locked in a bathroom. How can that be sane?”
In Santo Domingo, Jackie had sex with Alejándro in The Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor and thought about the bones of Christopher Columbus buried beneath her. Hispanola, she thought, is indeed the loveliest island in the West Indies. At the gardens of Los Tres Ojos, Alejándro took her to a 50-foot deep cave with crystal-clear, spring-fed lagoons surrounded by stalagmites and lush vegetation. Quieres casarte conmigo? He asked. Will you marry me? In answer, Jackie replied, Lo siento, pero no sé nadar: I'm sorry, I don't know how to swim.
“Jackie, the band is about the play that song you like,” says Dan.
“Dan,” says Jackie, “why do women have to have a separate museum? Why can't women have more space in the existing museums?”
“Jackie,” says Dan, “what, in the world, are you talking about?”
“When we were dating, why did you take me to that woman's museum? Why didn't you take me to the Traveling Smithsonian or the Naval Air Station Museum? Why did you have to separate my gender from our field trip?”
“I was trying to make you happy, Jackie.”
“It's separatism, Dan, pure and simple.”
“It's only separatism if you let it be, Jackie.”
Jackie closes her eyes as the band begins to play “One is the Loneliest Number…” “How could you hire a Three Dog Night cover band, Dan? I trusted you with one thing, just this one thing.”
“How could you tell my mother about that Spanish dude you did in Mexico?”
“It wasn't Mexico,” says Jackie, “it was the Dominican Republic.”
“Whatever.”
“And he wasn't Spanish, he was Argentinean.”
“I knew it,” says her sister, “I knew you were having sex with him the whole time. How could you do it, Jackie? You knew I had a crush on him.”
“For Christ's sake,” says her father, “did I pay three thousand dollars apiece for you two to go down there and sleep with the entire Mexican Army?”
“It wasn't Mexico,” says her mother.
“Be quiet, Dottie.”
“No, Daddy, of course not.”
“Then what?”
“Well, we learned to speak Spanish,” says Jackie, thinking about the things Alejándro taught her to say: Tocame aquí, Quiero hacerte el amor, No quedarte aquí esta noche; Touch me here, I want to make love to you, You can't sleep here tonight.
“Tell me one thing you learned to say,” says her father.
“Necesito un Green Card,” says Jackie. “That's what I learned to say. Will you ask Dan if he packed five pair of underpants?”
“Jackie,” says Dan, “five year old girls wear underpants. I wear boxers.”
“Okay then, boxers. Did you pack five pair of boxers?”
“No.”
“Well, how many?”
“Jackie-”
“How many, Dan?”
“Three.”
“But we're supposed to be gone for a week. How can you live for a week on three pair of boxers?”
“I'm sure there is a coin laundry down there.”
“We're going to Fiji.”
“Has Fiji never heard of the coin laundry?”
“How about a parka? Did you pack a parka?”
“No.”
“A waterproof windbreaker?”
“No.”
“An umbrella?”
“No, of course not.”
“Jackie, I've got an umbrella he can borrow,” says her mother.
“How come this book says you need five pair of underpants but I need six pair of panties? Why do I need an extra pair of panties, Dan? Why do I need only three bras and you need five undershirts?”
“Jackie, I don't wear undershirts.”
“What is this saying? Why do I need fewer bras than panties? What is this trying to say, Dan?”
“Jackie, how many bras did you pack?”
“Six.”
“How many pair of panties?”
“Six.”
“Then what's the problem?”
Jackie pauses for a moment, thinks about a quote she read last week in an article from People magazine: “I wanted to subvert the expectations of a nasty guy,” it had said.
“I don't know,” says Jackie. “It seemed logical.”
Jackie thinks about Reverend Joe's advice: Be supportive, undemanding, charming, polite. Fill your house with curtains and lace (men like that even though they say they don't). Be sweet to the world. Always wear pantyhose, skirts, high heels and dresses to important functions. Never dress like a man. Feel free to cry at funerals and birthdays and weddings. Never regret your children. But above all, ignore the next-door neighbor and the college professor and the teenager on aisle six.
“This is all your fault,” Dottie says to Jackie's sister.
“My fault,” she asks, “how can this be my fault?”
“You're her sister, how come you didn't know any of this was going on?”
“Jackie's the one who stole my Argentinean boyfriend. How come no one's blaming her?”
“It's nobody's fault,” says Dan.
“Oh, it's got to be somebody's fault,” says Jackie's father, “you can always place blame on a limited third partner if nothing else.”
“Quit being such a lawyer,” says her mother.
“You know, you're crucifying yourself all the time,” says her aunt. “When you're in the illness, everything is the end of the world. You don't do the cooking right. You don't make enough sparkling conversation. You constantly tell yourself that 'you didn't do this, and you didn't do that,' but why, why do you do this?”
“It's not illness it's marriage,” says her sister.
As the group begins to argue among themselves, Jackie thinks: One day I will crush my fingers in the sliding door of a 1998 Dodge Caravan, fuck the neighbor who stole my lawnmower, dig toads out of my dirty laundry, learn to make stuffed pumpkin with cranberry-raisin bread pudding, attend the 7th Annual Marilyn Smith Charity Golf Classic, buy pot from a high school dropout, and misunderstand the importance of black eye shadow.
TWENTY YEARS INTO the future, Jackie has raised two children. Her oldest, a boy named Hunter, eloped with a girl named Trisella in a city hall somewhere in the marshes of Louisiana after attending the annual jazz festival in New Orleans. Jackie, now a famous modern abstract painter, has illustrated and published 15 children's books of poetry, and in every book used her name. She even had it changed legally, telling Dan to 'go fuck himself' when he suggested that it would be easier for the neighbors if they went by the same name. “A woman stifles her own knowledge,” Jackie said, “hiding it even from herself. There's a difference between what a woman knows and what a culture is willing to hear, especially when it concerns something like her name.” Dan then locked himself in the bathroom and read the sports page, stating that separatism had its place in the world. Jackie agreed.
THE GRASSY MEDIAN
MONDAY
My doctor says I need to give up smoking and drinking. I ask if he thinks I should give up everything fun in my life. “No,” he says, “just the things that are killing you.” Funny man. He says I can keep the men, for now. “Thanks,” I say, “but what's the point, since drinking enables me to look at them and smoking gives my mouth something to do when they've showed their talent and there's really nothing left for me to say except goodbye.” He says my outlook on life is poor and that my relationships will keep going to hell unless I learn to trust. He writes me a prescription for Valium and sends me on my way. I hate men.
TUESDAY
My friend Carol calls and says we don't get together enough, asks if I can meet her at some new trendy bar on 33rd and Main. I say sure, no harm in looking. The bottles don't pour by themselves. I get there early. She arrives late and swears it was the traffic. I decide to forgive her. She's been the only friend who has hung on, despite my best attempts at shaking her loose. But I'm almost positive her lateness is purposeful, wants to test my resolve, show how she's emotionally stable. That's what friends do. Carol immediately starts rambling about Charlie and I wish I could drink, maybe then I could stop tapping my foot and sit still long enough to focus on her voice. Charlie this and Charlie that. I look up. She stops talking. “What are you looking at?” she asks. “Nothing,” I say, though it's of course a big fat lie and I know she can see right through it. Bitch always could. Her eyes follow mine to the waiter bending over the next table and I can hear her charm bracelet bang against her wrist as she shakes her finger at me; a child's silhouette, a cheerleader's megaphone, a golden outline of Idaho: jingle, jingle, jingle. “You're looking at that boy,” she says. I sigh real big and tell her, “It's all right to look. Even the doctor said so.” She huffs and tells me “that boy” is too young to be looked at. She's right. I know she's right. “You're pathetic,” she says. I half-heartedly tell her I'll stop. “You won't,” she says as she performs her own big sighing routine. “You're looking at him like he's a piece of meat,” she says. I can feel my mouth start to water as I've caught his eye. Men are too easy.
WEDNESDAY
I hate myself.
The smell of butane now makes me horny.
I'm thirsty all the time and my hands won't stop shaking.
I need a drink but have a cigarette instead.
I yelled at the boy and he disappeared, though now I can't recall when he left or how long he's been gone.
THURSDAY
I lay in bed all day watching television, flipping back and forth between CSPAN and CNN, and wonder how many of the politicians are cheating on their wives. I wonder how many of the wives know. I wonder how long it took those guys to sell themselves to the insurance companies and oil companies and telephone companies and all the big conglomerates that step on little people. I wonder if I'll ever again care about the little people they step on.
FRIDAY
Carol calls, says, “You need to get your ass out of bed,” which kind of surprises me because she's not too big on cuss words, never has been. I used to revel in them when we were kids, used to drive Carol crazy. Her mom had her all twisted up about God and she somehow came away with the idea that saying fuck would earn her a one-way ticket to hell. Carol was earnestly convinced that my soul was in jeopardy of burning for eternity, and in a sincere, misguided attempt to save me from the fiery pit, she began crossing herself with every bad word that escaped my mouth. Like God cared about what I said. You'd think His plate would have been full of problems considering all the starving children, which is something I mentioned to her when we were ten years old and I finally told her the constant Father, Son, and Holy Ghost routine was creeping me out. Besides that, I told her, I was absolutely sure God had a sense of humor and that there really was something inherently funny about a ten year old saying, “Hey, forgive me Sister Carol, I'm just a tiny Don Vito Corleone.” Only Carol didn't get the joke since her parents never let her see The Godfather. “It's funny,” I say to her now, “the things you think about when you're slowly going crazy.” I get only silence from her end. She doesn't know what I'm talking about, doesn't know how to fix me and keep me from going crazy. That's her problem. She thinks she can fix the world.
SATURDAY
Carol finally comes over. At first I try to ignore her but she just keeps ringing the bell over and over until I can't stand it anymore. “You look terrible,” she says as she pushes her way into my apartment. “I brought you orange juice.” I look at the bright orange liquid, imagine the acid taste on my tongue, and instantly want to vomit. She tells me she saw the boy, delivering groceries uptown on a sturdy little Schwinn. I could almost swear she sounds proud of herself. “I don't care,” I say and hope she really believes me, though I know she doesn't. I can see the gloating look in her eye and I want to smash in her face until she bleeds. My mind fast forwards, imagines the inevitable conversation as I watch Carol adjust the top of her panty hose through her skirt:
Doesn't it bother you?”
“What?”
“That the guy you slept with is nothing more than a delivery boy.”
“No.”
“How does that not bother you?”
“I've been living in my bathrobe for five days, Carol. My mouth tastes like cat fur. Why would I care about some guy I've already forgotten?”
“How could you have forgotten him already? You just had sex with him.”
“My point exactly. I just had sex. I never expected love.”
Carol looks up at me and notices I've been staring at her. “Well, I think you do care,” she finally says. I can tell she really hopes I believe her.
SUNDAY
The doctor says I should make a list of my accomplishments. “A short list,” I say. He tells me to make a list of things to feel positive about, things to look forward to in my life. I tell him that list would be even shorter. “Then combine them,” he says. Just what I need: a smart-ass doctor late for the fucking ballet. I make the list. My accomplishments: Today I washed my hair. Things to feel positive about: Tomorrow I may have enough energy to wash it again.. Things to look forward to… I can think of nothing. I put the list down.
I'll try and finish it tomorrow.
MONDAY
I watch the news again today. Some woman found a puppy in a sewer drain running underneath a construction site. She got herself all in a bunch, wanted the puppy out, wanted to save him from certain death. She called the fire department, called the police; someone called the news. They are all working frantically, digging up lawns, busting through pipes, tracing the source of his chilling howls with a special tool some geologist invented to find oil. The scene is mesmerizing but I can't help thinking, what will they do with the puppy once they find him? Will someone adopt him? Will they send him to the pound? I think of all the puppies already sent there. How come no one is going to this much effort to save them? The pit of my stomach hurts. There's no fame in saving a puppy from the needle and it certainly won't get your face on some lame anthology about animals in peril. The telephone rings. I know it's Carol so there's not much use in ignoring, she'll just keep trying. As I pick up the phone the puppy is finally free and I smile in spite of myself. “The puppy is saved,” I say. Somehow she knows exactly what I'm talking about. “Yes,” she says, “but he's covered with muck. Who will want him now?” I can see the crowd standing around this wet ball of fur, their smiles are sort of disappearing and maybe they're starting to realize what fools they've made of themselves; all this effort over an ugly stray puppy. “I want him,” I say. Carol laughs. “I'll get him for you,” she says. “You deserve him.” I suddenly have the urge to clean the house and take a shower but I haven't the energy to move. I feel like one of the strangers, my smile disappearing in revelation.
“Did I ever tell you about my theory, Carol? That we're all just one step away from crossing over the grassy median and heading into oncoming traffic?” There's a silence between us that I find somewhat comforting. “Yes,” she finally says. “But the problem with theories is that, in order to be proven true or false, the experiment must be replicated time and again.”
I get what she's saying. Empirical data is very important. I say thanks and hang up the phone. I grab my list. Things to look forward to: A furry male covered in shit.
Too easy.
EGGS, MURDER, SEX, AND BASEBALL
MILTON JEFFRIES MUST die, that much is given.
I've been reading all the signs lately and they certainly all point in the direction of his immediate, swift demise. And you can never go wrong when reading the signs, especially when they are so obvious. Yesterday I was walking down the sidewalk, the one that parallels Hemlock Street, and I came across a dead crow, black as night, ants streaming in and out of the eye sockets in a solid, breathing mass of bodies. When I saw that I felt a measure of comfort.
Yet as I stand above Milton, feet gingerly straddling the sides of his round middle, hands encircling the firm, hard wood of a Louisville Slugger, I have an overwhelming sense of dread. It's not that I fear his death; on the contrary, I welcome it. No, I cherish it. The terminology could be considered a petty matter but I did once vow to do just that, cherish him until his death. Perhaps it is not even dread I feel; perhaps it is simply the overwhelming knowledge that I have failed so miserably at something I once thought of as so easy.
My friend Marcie says that fear of failure consumes us all, whether we admit it or not. It's her personal scientific theory that we are all just one bad day away from spraying the highway with bullets. According to Marcie, all it might take to set any one person off could be something as simple as an overdrawn checking account, a broken down car, or a burned out light bulb. Perhaps that is just precisely what happened to me.
Maybe it was Milton Jeffries himself, prominent medical doctor, beloved family practitioner, the man I eagerly promised to love until death; perhaps it was he who compelled an otherwise sane woman to such an extreme measure and forced my hands to commit the act of murder. Milton just pushed me one step too far, and in doing so caused his own premature yet highly anticipated death. It all makes sense, really, if you think about it, and it is a fairly logical explanation, since it is widely known, by my own honest word, and from the testimony of the unquestionably pious, dedicated women of the Singleton First Baptist Friday Night Prayer Group, that a woman should never, ever be pushed too far. Milton should have known better.
“These eggs aren't runny enough,” he says to me this morning.
“They're fine,” I say. “Cooked eggs aren't supposed to be runny.”
“I like them runny,” he says.
“It's gross. All that sticky yellow liquid swimming around on the plate like slimy pond water.”
“Eggs are not supposed to be this dry. Look at this. Would you just look at this?”
“It's not good for you to eat food that's not cooked all the way through, Milton.”
“Since when are you so concerned about my health?” he asks.
“I've always concerned myself about your health,” I say.
“Yeah, sure you have,” he says. “I can't eat this. I'm going to the Waffle House.”
“You'll do no such thing,” I say.
Imagine the nerve. This is the man who insists that it is my wifely duty to get up thirty minutes earlier than I have to in order to cook his stupid eggs to begin with. “The Waffle House will kill you,” I say. “Too much butter and saturated fat. I'll cook you some more eggs.”
I grab the plate and his chubby hands hold on to the edge of my grandmother's bone china a moment longer than necessary, so that I'm forced to stay facing him, forced to look at his plump cheeks, his stale eyes. “Just don't make this batch too dry,” he says and I silently wonder how long it will be before his knuckles disappear entirely. How long will it be before I'm staring at four tiny dimples peeping out at me from the edges of four pudgy fingers and a little ball of fat?
“Fine, Milton,” I say as I crack three new eggs into the pan. I punch the yolk with the fork I hold in my right hand and smile to myself. Milton likes to break it himself on top of a piece of toast, but it's the little pleasures in life that keep me going these days. Breaking the yolk, running red lights in the middle of rush hour, smoking the homegrown dope I found tucked in the corner of our son's closet.
“Maggie, don't you dare break that yolk,” he says to my back.
As he speaks I think about this article I read in the paper about some woman who killed her entire family with rat poison. No logical reason that anyone could tell, just up and flipped herself out, walked calmly down to the basement and found some old poison that had probably been sitting on a window sill gathering dust for twenty years or more. Strong stuff. Government outlawed it years and years ago. That's the trouble with my life, there's nothing in my basement over a year old. Milton has a strict rule about that, keeps that musty hole cleaner than any other part of the house. Thinks he's going to get a pool table one day.
“Here,” I say as I shovel the eggs onto a new plate and plop it in front of him. I stand beside the table with my hands on my hips, silently daring him to say something. I smile a big smile. “How's that?” He doesn't answer. He doesn't even look at me. He just picks up his fork and started eating, one methodical bite after another, until he's finished and then he drops the fork on the plate with a loud clink and stands up, his belly rubbing the edge of the table as he rises.
“Fabulous as always, sweetheart,” he says and gives me a big, wet kiss on the forehead. I grit my teeth as he walks away from the table, leaves the dirty plate behind for me to wash, grabs his coat, walks out the door and shuts it just a little too hard.
I hear rock music filtering downstairs from Geoffrey's radio and wondered when it was that I came to think his music was nothing more than a stream of angry, shouting teenagers. When was it that the lyrics became silly? I used to like that kind of stuff. In fact, I was the first on my block to buy Led Zeppelin's first album. When was it, exactly, that all my preset stations moved from rock and roll to easy listening? Why had I ever, ever agreed that Geoffrey Jeffries was a wonderful sounding name for a child to carry around his whole entire life?
“Geoffrey Jeffries,” I scream to the staircase, “get down here and eat. You're going to miss the bus and I'm sure as heck not going to take you to school.”
The music stops and my son of fourteen years saunters down the staircase as if he owns the house. “I'm not in the mood,” he says and I wonder why it's a mystery to the rest of the world that so many mothers go insane. If I were a hamster I would have eaten him long ago and spun his bones into a furry little nest in the corner of my cage.
“It wasn't natural for me to love you,” I say. “I didn't give birth to a desire to give up all the fun in my life.”
“Fine, mother,” he says. “Can I have my lunch money?”
I hand him a twenty and wish that he looked more like me and less like his father. Life is so unfair in so many ways. “You have your father's metabolism,” I say. “Stay away from the cheeseburgers this week.” He takes a deep breath and I can tell he's gritting his teeth. I can see Milton in his hair, his hands, his short, round arms and legs. But just for a second I see my mother in his eyes, in the way his eyebrows lift up as he starts to say something in return, the way his lashes fall over his cheeks as he looks down to the floor instead. My breath catches in my throat and I put a hand on his cheek but he jerks away from my touch.
“I deserve that,” I say. “But it's not my fault, Geoffrey, it's your father.”
“It always is,” he says as he leaves with the same loud slam as his father, and I have to agree with him.
It's not that Milton is a bad man. Although, when you think about each individual act, his fault category seems to rise in correlation to the fall of his positive features. This trend can in fact be traced back as far as our wedding. After all, he did take his own sweet time in proposing marriage to me and did so only after discovering that Sally Ann Guillotte had some kind of a distant, murky relation to those creepy looking Guillottes who live near the Chickasabogue Swamp and were consistently rumored to have interbred a time or two. A man in Milton's position could forgive a girl as pretty as Sally Ann for just about anything except such a disreputable lineage. Never mind that Milton's own class history was somewhat questionable and that the social order of the world according to Monroeville didn't take a girl's intelligence into account when leveling her importance to the town, Sally Ann was deemed unsuitable for Milton.
At the time this seemed a catastrophic outcome for Sally Ann and one of immense good fortune for myself since I was soon asked to become the wife of one Milton Jeffries, Junior, future doctor, town councilman, and president of the local Moose Lodge #306. Little did I know that Sally Ann would soon move away from Monroeville, graduate from MIT, start her own company, and create an endless supply of plastic baby products for the world's insatiable appetite for disposable convenience.
How can a woman compete with that sort of success? It took me ten long years of testing anonymous urine samples for syphilis at the Alabama State Department of Heath and Human Services before I rose to the position of Sector Two Lab Manager, and I'm still quite sure that had I not slept with Sidney Covington after the office Christmas party, I would have made the leap to management much quicker. But 1998 was a bad year for everyone I know and office politics can be a bitch.
Looking back, it's obvious to me now that I should have taken Milton's matrimonial reluctance as a formidable sign straight away. Of course, the trouble with signs is that you rarely notice them until things get well beyond your control and you find yourself sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a growing list of possible ways to murder one Milton Jeffries, Junior, wondering how you hadn't seen those signs since now they seem to have been so damned obvious from the start. But that's what love will do to a woman. It's like a drug, really. I have proof of it. I read about some scientists up near Maine who did some testing, complete with empirical data and everything, and discovered that a female in love has the same brain chemistry as a female high on crack cocaine. Well, as soon as I read that little piece of information I clipped the article and pasted it in my personal journal for future reference, since it is absolutely impossible to argue with Milton without benefit of scientific data of some sort.
Of course, Milton doesn't believe in such things and says “it is contrary to what is right with the world for a woman who possesses a Master's Degree in Biology to believe in such foolishness.” But I know better. I know that my belief in supernatural powers is neither odd nor strange on its face when you consider that three of my male coworkers are devout baseball fans and carry their superstitions so far as to make you turn around three times in a row and spit on the sidewalk if you mention the words “loser” and “Atlanta” on the same day that the Braves are playing in town.
I once made the mistake of committing the deadly game day word combination. Charlie Watson, Head of the Virology Department, pounced on me and I did the twirling, spinning, spitting thing only after he promised to take his wife Martha out to dinner more often. Poor thing. Always cried herself silly after every Friday night prayer group and talked herself raw about how Charlie never paid any attention to her anymore. Little good it did me though, a week later Martha dumped him for a man half her age because she said Charlie had somehow lost the ability to give her an orgasm.
I saw Martha in the grocery store three weeks after, wearing her Singleton Baptist Choir T-shirt, and I wondered how it was that she could attract a man like that while wearing a bright yellow, worn cotton T-shirt that reads: Altos are Ladies Too.
Every day I become more and more convinced that Jesus is watching every move we make and has already given us a one-way ticket straight to Hell, which is what I told Charlie yesterday at lunch, as we were sitting in the Break Room talking about the trouble with our kids and our cars and our Milton Jeffries Juniors. And Charlie says, “You are too gracious and good-mannered for the likes of Milton,” and I say, “Yeah, I know.”
So, knowing all of this, you can understand why I say, “Milton, I'm leaving you,” as he walks through the door three hours late and my homemade chili has burned to the bottom of my pot. But Milton always has a way of spoiling things and just looks at me like I'm crazy, walks to his recliner and proceeds to sit down and take off his shoes and socks. He doesn't even look at me, just leans over with a grunt, picks up his round leg, props his brown oxford on his knee, and starts to untie. His motions are slow, careful, and intentional. I want to run over and yank the shoe off his pudgy foot, hit him over the head with the heel and watch him bleed.
“Did you hear me?” I ask.
“I heard you,” he says. He picks at the lint between his toes and I can smell the sweaty, lingering odor of his feet. I can feel my stomach tighten as I think about the smell contaminating his hands. Milton Jeffries, Junior, sweaty-foot-hand man.
“Do you have any response at all?” I ask. I suddenly become aware of myself, as if I'm a cartoon on a page and my words are caught in a caption above my head. My voice is too high, my hands are on my hips as they were this morning, I look completely irrational and I feel completely foolish. This isn't going as planned. Instead of dropping a bomb I've lit a sparkler. The list. The list is my savior. Jesus works in mysterious ways. Think of the list and not his feet.
“What do you want me to say?” he says, and picks out a piece of white cotton as he talks and flicks it to the new hardwood floor; it floats, feather-like, until it lands beneath his feet with a soft bounce. I close my eyes. Number one, chainsaw scalping.
“You could ask me not to go,” I say.
“No, I can tell you've got your mind made up,” he says. “If you think you've got to go, then go you must, Maggie.” He's moved from the big toe to the smaller ones, allowing one finger to penetrate the space between the second and third toe, one between the third and fourth. He has to work at it, since his toes are so close together, and he see-saws his fingers back and forth until he finally reaches the webbing of skin at his foot. I clench my fists. Number two, quick stab to the heart with a serrated knife.
“But I thought you loved me, Milton,” I say. My out of body experience continues as I watch myself stamp my foot. I look like a child who's not getting the candy she wants. He looks at me for a second, furrows his brow and pushes all four fingers in between all five toes. He places the other hand on the heel of his foot and looks at the bottom, slowly fingering the callused padding beneath each toe. I click my heel loudly against the floor, like a deaf person trying to gain the attention of a hearing room. Number three, baseball bat to the head.
“What kind of answer were you looking for, Maggie?”
“You don't believe I'll go?”
“I do,” he says. He starts on the next foot with the same methodical approach. Another piece of white cotton falls to the floor and lands just inches from the first. Number four, gunshot wound to the groin followed by a mortal wound to the femoral artery.
“You watch,” I say. “I'll go.”
“I'm watching,” he says. He's calm. His voice is monotone. He speaks with no inflection, no emotion.
“I'll do it, asshole,” I say. “You watch. I'll pack my bags and send my mail to a new address.” I am very un-calm in a most peculiar way. My voice is hysterical. I speak with the inflection of a whiney four-year-old child.
“A new address that has only one name on the mailbox?” Fingers now in between all five toes of second foot. I take a deep breath. Number five, intravenous Liquid-Plumber.
“Of course,” I say. “Who else would share my mailbox?”
“No new other for you to torture? No new victim, Maggie?”
“And who would I be victimizing, Milton?
“I don't know, some innocent, pretty man who's only interested in sex. Some poor innocent dullard who can't see beyond the smell of you.” He's up on his bare feet now, looking me in the eye. He's stepped on the two pieces of lint, crushed them beneath his weight. They'll probably be stuck there all night. Maybe they'll rinse off in the shower tomorrow morning, fall down the drain, become part of some bigger lint collection that never goes anywhere and only gets bigger and wetter and bigger and wetter with every shower Milton takes.
“You think this boils down to sex?” I ask.
“Doesn't everything?” he replies.
“No,” I say. I will not be brought down to his level. I will not let his refusal to acknowledge my too-dry eggs and very loud heel clicking to turn into a debate about sex. Men are always doing that. They love to turn eggs into sex. Number six, crossbow at close range; scratch that, no legal access to cross bow. Amended number six, compound bow and arrow at close range.
“Why not?” he counters. “If not for sex we don't even exist.”
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” I scream. “We are not having a conversation about sex.”
“Aren't we?” He asks this and I decide that number three will do nicely. I've always liked baseball; the crack of the bat on the ball; the smell of boiled peanuts and spilled beer; the roar of the crowd as contact is made between wood and a leather-covered mass of spun cord.
A minute goes by before I answer, enough time for him to lose interest, sit back down, and once again busy himself with the task of making his feet as comfortable as possible. He flips the position of the wooden lever from front to back and the footrest springs forward with a thud, forcing me to jump back quickly and even though I do so, I feel his toenails brush against my bare shins.
“I'm going to bed,” I say. I know Milton will fall asleep where he now sits, watching football on television, refusing to allow anyone to turn the channel, though he will doze throughout the game, never pay close attention to the stats, and have no clue who won in the morning. Always selfish, even this close to death.
“Fine, Maggie,” he says as he hits the volume on the remote. “You look like you could use some sleep.
So, two hours later I'm poised with the Slugger, my bare feet balancing my body, one on each arm of the recliner, ready to strike, wondering why I haven't already split his head like a melon, wondering why I am filled with such dread. I decide not to let it bother me, since murder seems to be a harder thing to fuck up than marriage and if I manage to mess this up, if I'm not even able to crack the head on one Milton Jeffries, Junior, then I'm not much of a success in life at all and I know I will soon lose faith in Jesus as my personal savior because He knows everything, and He has a plan for everything, and I know for a fact that He wouldn't lead me astray.
Not wanting to destroy my faith, I take a practice swing. I move the bat in super slow motion, not allowing my wrists to break form. I can feel the air move slowly around me, feel the recliner gently rock as I stop the bat inches from his temple. It's a logical thing to do. All the greats take a few strikes before they hit one out of the park; they all take their share of check swings. It gets the crowd excited when a batter steps out of the box, taps his cleat with the end of the bat, and shakes loose a clump of red dirt. It makes the crowd appreciate the talent that much more. Anticipation is half the game. The unschooled masses never see the work and preparation that goes into a successful at-bat; all they know is contact.
I hold the bat steady, appreciating the slick feel of the worn wood beneath my palms. As Milton snores, a loose flap of skin catches in the pit of his throat and vibrates back and forth. I move the bat to the hollow of his neck, pushing it into his folds of skin. His breathing stops for just a second and then one loud snore catches in the back of his throat as I release the pressure of the bat.
From this angle I notice his head is shiny, dimpled, and almost perfectly cylindrical, like a white golf ball teed up on the base of his thick neck. I change the position of my hands, moving them just as Milton once taught me, left palm under, right palm over, pinkies interlaced and both thumbs pointing downward. I take my best swing. Problem is, I always hated golf and was never any damned good at it. As I rotate my hips into the down-stroke in an effort to gain more power, Milton shifts slightly and causes the recliner to bounce back and forth.
I immediately lose my balance and fall to the floor, cursing the fact that I had given up golf after two lessons as the momentum of my swing slings the bat from my hands. I watch as it lands across the room, slamming into the amber glass lamp Milton's mother gave us as a wedding present. I watch the glass shards fall to the floor; a thousand tiny drops of amber blood race across the slick wood. I look back to Milton, who is still asleep. I stand up quickly and shake him awake.
“Milton,” I say. “Milton, wake up.”
He at first resists, pushing my hand away from his shoulder.
“Wake up, you bastard. How could you sleep through that? I broke a fucking lamp! There's glass all over the floor! Did you hear me? I broke that fucking lamp. The one your mother gave us. The one you like so much. The one I hate. Milton, fucking bastard, wake the hell up."
I stand in front of the recliner, waiting for him to open his eyes. He looks at me with one eye and I am immediately disappointed.
“Maggie, what in the hell do you want? I was asleep for Christ's sake.”
I let a moment pass. It's the eggs all over again.
“Do you believe in signs, Milton?” I finally ask.
“What?” Both his eyes are open now; his brow is creased.
“Signs, Milton. Do you believe in them?”
“No,” he says, “of course not.”
“You should,” I say. “You should always believe in signs, especially the ones that are obvious.”
“Fine, Maggie,” he says, closing his eyes. He is immediately snoring again. His face is a breakfast plate: two eggs, sunny side up and a strip of bacon. For some reason this makes me smile.