A Happy Catastrophe

by Dawson, Maddie

  But then I looked up and there was Patrick coming toward me, holding out his arms, like a mirage coming through the blizzard. It was like seeing a Saint Bernard with a keg of brandy, only better. He, who disliked dogs almost as much as he hated being out in public, had gone out looking for my dog, and he’d found Bedford injured in the street, hit by a car. Patrick had taken him to the vet in his U-Haul truck, and then he came and found me in the park.

  There he was: a man with snow on his eyelashes and in his eyebrows, a man with crinkly, smiling eyes and a sad, lopsided grin, a man who loved me. Who had saved my dog.

  Until that moment, I don’t think Patrick really did know that he could have love in his life. Or that he could save a dog’s life by striding into a vet’s office and authorizing surgery. Or even that he could go after a life that he yearned for but which had seemed impossibly far away for him. But after that—well, maybe he figured out that resistance was futile, that there is love out there for all of us. He loved me. And I loved him, and I, for one, was sure that love was all it really took to make something work.

  We had a talk. He said he’d make a deal with me: he wouldn’t go home to Wyoming if I didn’t go home to Florida. We’ll see what happens, he said. Then, being all Patricky, he gave me all kinds of warnings about how hard it was going to be to drag himself permanently away from the planet My Lover Died in the Fire, but he hoped I wouldn’t give up on him. And he was going to try, too, he said. He’d at least try to stop parking his spaceship at that planet’s parking lot, he said.

  And so we started living together. It was wonderful. We took long bubble baths together with candles perched all around the tub, and both Bedford and Roy would curl up on the bathroom rug, watching us (and each other) with suspicion. We’d sit up late at night around the firepit on the roof, with my head on his shoulder, just talking and talking. He told me all about Blix and her outrageous shenanigans. He told me how she made him believe in magic.

  That first summer, we bought a hammock and two ukuleles, and we learned four songs that we’d sing at the tops of our lungs, so badly out of tune that we were sure the cars honking on the street were trying to drown us out. We read the New York Times in bed on the weekends, fighting over the Arts and Style sections and not getting up until noon. We discovered Blix’s treasure trove of recipes and cooked them all, slow-dancing in the kitchen while we waited for the pasta to boil.

  And in the classic tradition of lovers everywhere, we felt supremely sorry for anyone who wasn’t us.

  I’ll always believe that it was Blix, who was really the champion of the two of us, who somehow made sure that things straightened out for us. He and I have laughed about all the things she had to arrange just for that one moment of a change of heart for him: a snowstorm, a snow day from school, a stray dog taking off and getting lost, an accident that was bad but not too bad, the urgency of a U-Haul truck that needed to be packed. Oh, sure, she was dead by then—but let’s face it, Blix wasn’t the type to let a little change of address upset her plans. She stepped right in, and guided Patrick right smack into love.

  And now . . . well, here we are again. While I haven’t been paying attention, Patrick has gone off in the spaceship to his old familiar planet. I can feel this big old chunk of empty air where he used to be. No wonder my own faith in him has been wobbling; no wonder I’ve felt bereft as hell while I wait to see what happens. He’s been out in space for too long.

  Go to him. I hear her voice in my head. Go find him. Show him again what it means to love.

  So, I square my shoulders and put on the equivalent of my own space suit, grab my oxygen tank, and walk over to bring him back to Earth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  MARNIE

  His paintings are lined up in the front room. Ten of them, each one a fragile, heartbreaking meditation on desolation. Like the formless monsters that show up in your nightmares.

  I stare at them for as long as I can stand it. It’s not that they’re sad—sadness I could take, I respect sadness. It’s that they are so unspeakably bleak. Browny-green colors spread about in shapeless blobs. There is no Patrick in them.

  I don’t quite know what to say when he appears at the door, drying his hands on a towel.

  “Don’t even look at these,” he says. “They’re not going in the show.”

  “They’re not?”

  “No. Too awful. And speaking of awful, I suppose you saw the story.” His voice is clipped, businesslike.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you think?” He’s wearing an old black-and-blue plaid shirt and sweatpants, both of which seem to hang on him. The morning light makes him look haggard.

  “Well, I know it wasn’t what you hoped it would be. But the guy said a lot of nice things about you. True things even. You came out looking pretty good, in my humble opinion. It’ll bring people in to the gallery, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, well, in a perfect world, I’d say he didn’t absolutely need to go mentioning the damn police report just to write about an art show, for God’s sake. And all that hero stuff—bah!”

  He scowls, and I see in his eyes that he’s so much worse than he was a few weeks ago. He’s not only boarded his old spaceship, he’s already crash-landed back on the planet My Lover Died in the Fire, and he’s built himself a fort there. My palms feel sweaty. He is looking at me as though from a long distance, but I am nothing if not determined to save him, and so I make myself meet his eyes.

  “So . . . if you’re not showing these paintings, does that mean you’re canceling the show?”

  “No,” he says after a moment. “I have other work. Here. Come with me. I might as well show you what I’ve really been doing.”

  He leads me across the hall and opens the door and turns on the lamp, and we both stand there, blinking in the light. On the art table in the center of the room are a bunch of little sculptures—lifelike sculptures of a woman, all of them six to eight inches high. It takes me a moment to focus on them, to see what they really are, and then I have to take a deep, sharp breath.

  They are Anneliese.

  Some of the sculptures show only her face with its sensuous planes, her cheeks sloping into a half smile. I see her eyes, the carved lankiness of her hair.

  “This is the art I’m entering in the show,” he says. His voice trembles with . . . pride? Is that what I’m hearing?

  I edge closer to them. There must be ten or twelve sculptures all lined up, like exquisite little dolls: some of them in which she’s sitting or thinking, lying back on a pillow with one hand over her face. Here, she is standing with her arms held up to the sky, her legs spread apart, her face a mask of triumph. Another shows her body curled up on the floor in a fetal position, her face hidden, her legs drawn up tight to her body. There are another few that show her torso, the gentle flow of her arms outstretched.

  They are beautiful. They are sexy, they are genuine, they are human. Exquisite expressions of energy and life. And they are, every single one of them, depictions of his love for Anneliese.

  And not one of them is me. Something constricts in my chest.

  “Yeah,” he says softly. “You get it.” He walks around the table, so he can look at each one of them more closely. “So, this,” he says, “is what I’ve been trying to keep from you, that I’ve been reliving the whole experience with Anneliese.” His voice is halting.

  “Patrick,” I say. I speak loudly, like maybe I can snap him out of this. “But why? What’s the problem here? This isn’t something shameful that you had to keep from me. Why are you acting like it was? We know each other. I’m on your side, remember?” I turn and look at him, but the air between us has taken on a dangerous feel. Like the crackling before a thunderstorm maybe.

  He doesn’t drag his eyes away from all the Annelieses. “No. It’s not that simple. I’ve just been getting deeper and deeper. I feel like she’s right here with me. She feels so real to me now. Directing me.”

  “Get real. She’s not here d
irecting you! You were thinking about her and you did some sculptures, and they’re beautiful, and so you should show them.”

  He looks at me mournfully.

  “I need to tell you something,” he says. And I know, by the feel of the room, that he’s going to break up with me. And I am not having that today.

  “No, no. Really, let’s skip it for now, and go in and have some soup. My mom made soup. You need to eat something. Look at you. You’ve been working so hard you’re not even eating, are you?”

  His eyes look hollow. “I am so sorry,” he says, “but I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Can’t do what anymore? Make sculptures of Anneliese? Can’t eat soup? Of course you can. You just need to come back to yourself. This is all fine.”

  Calm down, I say to myself. None of this is real. He loves me. I love him. This is not how it ends. The magic is going to kick in any second now. Just don’t let him say the final thing. Keep talking to him.

  But he’s not feeling the magic. Yet. And so he holds up his hand to warn me away, and he says the Patrick version of the things guys say when they don’t love you anymore. All that mishmash of stuff, so jumbled I can barely listen. Phrases jump out at me through the buzzing in my ears.

  “I’m disappointing you . . . not any good to anyone . . . can’t be a father to Fritzie . . . can’t stand it that the place is full of teenagers half the time . . . hate chaos . . . need to be alone . . . need to take a break.”

  “Take a break?” I say. “What? No. We are not talking about this right now. I’m not having this. Because none of what’s going on right now is permanent. You don’t need to throw everything away when it’s all going to change in a few months’ time. Just wait it out.”

  “Marnie. Face it. It’s not working.”

  “What are you talking about? It does work! This is the crazy talking, Patrick. We’ve been together for years now, and I love you. You’re going to be okay! I know this more than I know anything else.”

  “It’s not about love. I-I have to stay away, go back to the way things were before, being alone, living with Anneliese.”

  “Living with Anneliese?” I say. “Excuse me?”

  He nods, almost imperceptibly.

  “Anneliese who—forgive me for mentioning this—is dead?”

  “She’s dead, but she’s still in my head,” he says. He shifts his weight and looks out into the distance. I feel like snapping my fingers in front of him to bring him back to reality. Then I feel like hugging him, holding on to him for dear life. I wish I knew the emotional equivalent of CPR. But I just stand there.

  “I do love you,” he says, “but it doesn’t mean anything when I’m still tormented by her, by what I did to her. I let her die, Marnie. I was standing right there, and I couldn’t save her.”

  “You did not let her die,” I say. “You tried to save her, but the fire was too big, and you couldn’t. And you survived. But that doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “No one understands.”

  “Okay then. Back up here a minute, and let me get this straight,” I say. I decide to go for humor, of what might pass for humor. “Dude, am I seriously to believe that you, my boyfriend—a guy who says he loves me and who only recently emerged from his cave of doom to try to live a real life among the Family of Man—has now discovered a new sub-cave of doom, where you are secretly mind melding with a woman I have no chance of competing with? Is that what’s going on? You can’t see us together anymore because you’re going to stay in this room while you think about this—once more, pardon the expression—dead woman? How does that make any sense? Tell me that.”

  “Technically,” he says gloomily, “it’s only an alcove of doom.”

  “I get it that she gets to be perfect because she’s not here any longer, but the advantage of me is that I could still perhaps come up with some new, fantastic ways of being in your life and loving you, if you’d just open your eyes and let it in. The solution, it seems to me, is not in shutting life out again, but in letting yourself be loved. Maybe you could love life precisely because Anneliese can’t. You know, like a tribute to love.”

  He’s silent for a moment, looking at his fingers and thinking, and I’m holding my breath, sure that any second now he’s going to turn to me and be regular, loving Patrick again.

  But then he speaks. His voice sounds rusty and like something is hurting his throat, and he speaks so quietly, I have to lean in to hear him.

  “There’s more to this. I have to tell you something. I can’t give you what you want.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Patrick. What you’re giving me—at least up until about Thanksgiving night at eight o’clock, when you moved into this stupid alcove of doom—has been just fine, thank you very much. And anyway, I get to say if it’s enough for me or not. You don’t get to say that. And I think we’re good here.”

  He sighs and shakes his head. Then, in a very quiet voice, he says: “No. I can’t give you babies.”

  The room goes so quiet, it’s like all the air went out of it.

  “Can’t or won’t?” I say at last.

  “I-I’m sterile.”

  I feel like I’m underwater, and everything is coming in and out of focus. And then my brain clears. “But wait, that’s not true. You already have a child! You’re not sterile.” I say this as though I’m a brilliant student, and I’ve located a loophole he hasn’t thought of.

  “I am. Sterile. From the fire,” he says. “The damage from the fire—it happens.”

  “So . . . what then? You’ve been lying to me? All this time while I was trying to get pregnant? You couldn’t ever do it, but you let me think—”

  “No. It wasn’t like that. I had forgotten.”

  I actually laugh. A high-pitched, strangled laugh. “What do you mean, you forgot? How does somebody forget something like that?”

  He sighs. “I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago to get my meds refilled. And I asked him about fertility, and he told me it’s impossible, since the accident. He said he’d told me, but I didn’t remember. Maybe I didn’t really care back then so I didn’t take it in. But the bottom line is that pregnancy is impossible. I’m sorry. You need to find someone else and get on with your life.”

  I stare at him. “You’re not sorry! You never even wanted me to get pregnant. Don’t act now like you’re sorry. This is the most convenient thing that’s ever happened to you and you know it.”

  “I’m sorry that you see it that way, because I don’t think of this as convenient at all,” he says.

  “Ohhh! So this is why you want to break up?” I say. I’m angry now. “Basically, what you’re saying is that because you can’t give me babies, you get to decide for both of us that we shouldn’t be together anymore. No asking me what I want. Or what I think. Maybe I would understand and prefer to have you in my life instead of babies, did you ever think of that? That that’s what love might consist of? Working on a solution together? No other solution occurs to you except living in a cave, being miserable, you and your cat. Running over to Paco’s for food and running back again. Except now, I’m pretty sure there won’t be Paco’s close by because no doubt you’re not going to want to remain in this building, while I generate all this chaos around. That’d be weird for you, wouldn’t it?”

  He looks shaken, I’m pleased to see.

  “So what do you envision happening?” I say. “What about Fritzie? Are you thinking that you and she are going to move somewhere else? Or are you going to fly her to Italy and give her back to her mom?”

  He shrugs. “We’ll have to work out some things,” he says quietly.

  I’m staring at the statues and there’s a loud buzzing in my ears, and so I’m surprised to realize that he’s still talking. Going on in a sad, defeated voice about how he’ll try to come up with a workable solution, something that makes sense for all of us. He’s not sure just yet what it will entail. For the time being, though, maybe he could stay in the studio? Out of my way?
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br />   Anger breaks over me in waves, a whole tsunami of fury. I have to make a fist to keep from picking up every one of those sculptures and hurling them at him. Patrick is so broken he doesn’t even know how to break up properly. You’re supposed to make it clean and respectful, state your position, and then get the hell out. Leave everybody a shred of dignity.

  I need to get away from him. I don’t want to stand here listening to his drifty talk about the next stages—the moving out, or what nebulous plan he has for Fritzie. It seems to me that a man who is orchestrating a freaking wimp-ass breakup like this should have thought of all that before.

  Help! I think. Blix, look at what’s happening here! Remind him what’s important.

  I give it a minute, just in case Blix has a little magic to contribute. A watery winter sunbeam is half-heartedly breaking through the dusty window, and I stare at the parallelogram it’s forming on the oak floor. Blix is silent, the dust motes are silent, Patrick turns away, and the anger at the center of me is the only thing I can hold on to with any certainty.

  And then I turn and walk out of his studio and slam the door behind me as hard as I can.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PATRICK

  Patrick picks up two of the Annelieses who fell over when the door slammed and straightens them out, finds them a suitable location on the table where they’ll be safe. The least he can do is keep the plaster Annelieses safe.

  He certainly can’t keep anything else safe, he thinks. He’s crap at life right now.

  But—despite the hollowness in the pit of his stomach, despite the fact that he might very well throw up any second, he knows he’s done the right thing. Telling her. Breaking up with her was never going to be easy, but it was going to be far harder to carry on like this, watching her get progressively more disappointed.