Bad Ideas

by Missy Marston

  They start the procedure again. Mark sits astride the bull, shimmies forward. The rope is wrapped around the animal and pulled tight, then around the cowboy’s hand and pulled tight again. Gloved hand folded over rope. Hat crushed down on head. A quick nod and the gate is thrown open.

  Jules has a bad feeling. He doesn’t want to watch. But he has to watch.

  The bull explodes out of the chute like it has been shot out of a cannon. It leaps skyward, throwing its hips up and kicking out the back. Mark is sticking to it, one hand in the air. The bull spins to the right, bucking. All four hooves are off the ground at once, the bull twisting its body in midair, trying to send the cowboy flying off over its backside. No dice. Mark is still there, knees driven into the sides of the animal, bending at the waist, keeping that hand high.

  Two seconds left before the horn blows.

  The bull throws its weight into another spin, bucking, reaching a horn back, trying to catch the cowboy’s leg. Then one huge leap upward. Mark pulls his torso up straight, his whole body is tensed, waiting for the bull’s front hooves to hit the ground, sending its ass high into the air. Mark leans back, anticipating. But the bull slips in the mud, slides to the side, sending Mark flying through the air.

  The horn sounds before he hits the ground. It counts! The ride counts! Jules is elated. Sends a fist skyward.

  Except Mark hits the ground headfirst.

  His body bends at the waist then flops over onto the ground like a rag doll.

  Four clowns appear out of nowhere, all suspenders and baggy shorts. They circle the bull; they clap, they hoot and holler, wave hats in the bull’s face, dance backward toward the break in the fence. Leading the bull away.

  Away from the still, still figure on the ground.

  Jules turns his back and covers his face with both hands.

  Because sometimes you just want to go home

  Fenton has a bad feeling. He is standing outside the back door, his hand on the doorknob, gathering his strength. He listens.

  Nothing.

  Not a sound.

  He takes a deep breath and opens the door into the kitchen. Tammy is not there.

  The table is gleaming clean. The chairs are pushed in. The floor has been swept and mopped. He removes his boots and places them on the mat, as he has been told to do hundreds, possibly thousands, of times. He is not always good at remembering things. He pads across the kitchen to the living room. Tammy is not there, either.

  He looks down the hallway and sees that the bathroom door is closed. But there is no sound. He steps closer, creeping as quietly as he can. He places his ear against the door. The sound of water dripping into a full tub, a ripple of movement in the water.

  A quiet moan, a sniff.

  Fenton draws back from the door, spooked. “Tammy?”

  No answer.

  “Tammy, you OK?” Fenton is scared now. He feels like a child, standing there in his sock feet in the hallway.

  “Just come in, Fenton.” He barely hears it. She says: “Just come in already.”

  Fenton opens the door cautiously, as though something might spring out at him. Nothing about this feels right. He looks in to see Tammy, beautiful Tammy, lying in the bath. Her head, her nipples, and her knees are the only parts of her above the water line, like little islands scattered across the surface. The air is warm and humid, making his shirt cling to his chest. Fenton is not usually allowed into the bathroom when Tammy is in the bath. He is not usually allowed to see her naked in the daylight anymore. Not since she told him to stop coming to the bar. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. And then there is another surprise: she looks at him with love in her eyes. And tears.

  Now he is truly afraid.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  “I love you, Fenton.”

  This can’t be good, he thinks. “Jesus Christ.” Fenton sits on the lid of the toilet. He looks at his feet. Prays to stay conscious, not to succumb to the strangeness that can overtake him sometimes. He wants to see everything, hear everything. Something important is happening.

  Tammy laughs. She wipes her eyes. “Come on in here, babe. There’s room.” She sits up to make space for him at the drain end of the tub. Fenton takes off his socks and unbuckles his belt, drops his pants to the floor. Tammy is still smiling at him and tears are running down her cheeks. He pulls his shirt off and dips a toe into the hot water. He eases himself in and the water threatens to overflow. They are careful not to slosh around too much as they find a way to make all four of their legs fit together comfortably. Fenton has to sit to the side to avoid the faucet. His neck hurts as he looks at her beautiful face. “What’s going on?”

  A sob like a shout comes out of her and startles him. He holds her feet in his hands under the water. She shakes her head. “I want to go home, Fenton. I want to see my baby.”

  She is weeping now, gasping for air. Fenton strains forward to reach her, to take her in his arms, but he can only reach around her bent knees. He pulls himself up, using the sides of the tub. He splashes around noisily, awkwardly rearranging himself until he is kneeling between her legs. Water splashes over the edge of the tub and onto the floor as he reaches down and pries her away from the back of the tub. He pulls her slippery shuddering body close and waits.

  He just holds her and waits until she tells him what to do next.

  Because the sun on the water looks like diamonds

  Tammy is driving like a fucking lunatic. She is heading east on Highway 2 and Fenton is hanging out the window like a big, skinny, happy dog. She takes the curves sharp and at speed as the sunlit trees fly by the driver’s side window in a brilliant haze, the wide blue river winding in and out of view on the right. Some highway! So narrow it is barely wide enough for two cars, trees encroaching from either side, making a tunnel to shoot through in the cool sunlight. So many curves and dips you’d have to be crazy to pass anybody. (Which she is, and she does.) Towns so small, so indistinguishable from the miles of fields and forests between them, only the green-and-white road signs attest to their existence: Johnstown, Cardinal, Iroquois.

  Blink and you’ll miss them, thinks Fenton.

  Tammy takes another curve and looks over, smiling at him, her hair flying around her face. Cigarette packs and matches and wadded up foil burger wrappers slide across the bench seat and settle against his thigh.

  “Light me a smoke, Fenton!”

  Fenton hunches forward and pushes the lighter in, checks two empty packs and tosses them on the floor, then fishes a cigarette out of a third. He bobbles it as Tammy flies over a sharp little rise in the road and his ass leaves the seat for a second.

  “Jesus, woman! Slow down!” he says, but he is laughing. He loves it when she is happy.

  He lights the cigarette and takes a long drag before handing it across to her. He blows the smoke out the window and looks out at the ripples on the water. Diamonds, he thinks. The sun on the water always looks like diamonds. No other way to describe it. And as he looks at the water, it recedes a bit, like a photograph being pulled away across the flat surface of a table.

  Because a tumour is the last thing you need

  Tammy can see him starting to slump in his seat out of the corner of her eye. She shoves at his shoulder.

  “Fenton! Earth calling! ”

  He tries to stay with her, but he can’t. His eyes close and his head falls forward and to the side.

  Tammy steps on it, then turns onto a gravel road, the back of the truck fishtailing behind them. She pulls to a stop at the end of the road. There is a graveyard to the left, the rocky shore and the river straight ahead, trees on the right reaching over top of the road and touching above the truck. Tunnel of love, she thinks. She lifts Fenton’s chin and turns his face toward her. He opens his eyes. Then closes them. He mumbles something that sounds like Sorry.

  “Sorry? You better be sorry. You so
n of a bitch, Fenton. You better not have a fucking brain tumour. That’s all I need.” These episodes of Fenton’s are starting to scare her. She leans back in her seat, looks out at the glittering surface of the water.

  “I’m here,” says Fenton. “I’m right here.” His eyes are still closed, and his hands are trembling a little, vibrating against the seat. Tammy slides over close to him, sweeps the garbage off the seat and onto the floor. She ducks her head so she doesn’t bump it on the ceiling as she straddles his lap. She pulls off her top and takes off her bra. Then she lifts up his T-shirt, pushes her bare breasts against him, and starts gently kissing his lips.

  She kisses his mouth over and over again until he starts kissing her back.

  Because Sunday is the Lord’s Day (not yours)

  It is Sunday. Darren Robertson’s forty-fifth birthday. Forty-five! How the hell did that happen? He hadn’t slept all night. At the kitchen sink, washing the breakfast dishes, he looks out over the backyard. It looks like he feels: shitty and busted up. There are groundhog holes, more dandelions and thistles than grass, a wooden fence that has buckled and caved in at the northwest corner, possibly home to a nest of rabbits. The yard is a fucking disgrace.

  Pulling off his yellow rubber gloves with a snap, he thinks, Yes.

  Today is the day.

  He is going to get out there and make something of that crappy yard. Clean it up. Fix the fence. Maybe pull up a patch of sod in the back corner so he can plant a vegetable garden next year. Maybe he can even set up a little fountain.

  As a rule, Darren tries not to think about them. But every year on his birthday, he thinks about the girls. How old they would be: Trudy would be twenty-three this year, he guesses, and Tammy would be twenty-two. He thinks about how they must have their own adult lives now. How they must hate him. How they are right to hate him. And he tries not to think about Claire. Oh, the mess he made.

  So many messes a single human man can make in forty-five years. So many and so large.

  Darren heads out to the yard in his old jeans and rubber boots. He is already too hot, sweating inside his flannel shirt. He digs up the massive weeds one by one with a spade, shakes the soil off the roots, and flings them over the fence. Hour after hour, weed after weed, working in tight rows, back and forth across the lawn. He looks back at what he has done. It looks worse than ever: brown divots all over the place. He is not sure whether it is better to stop or to keep going. The sun is warm now, high overhead, and he has a tight feeling in his chest every time he breathes. Like he might hiccup or belch.

  But nothing happens.

  Just this feeling like a knot tightening deep inside his chest.

  Then he thinks he sees something sparkling in the sunlight in the hole he has just dug, but he can’t see what it is. He sees a worm slide out of the dark earth and back in. Light bounces off something at the bottom of the hole again. What is it?

  Darren tries to kneel to get a closer look but falls forward and onto his side. The side of his face is on the grass. It smells like summer and fall all at once: grass and soil and dried leaves. Pain fills his chest and freezes him in place. It spreads up to his jaw, makes him close his eyes. He makes a sound like an old cow lowing, begging to be milked.

  Mmmmmuh-AAAW!

  Starting to feel desperate now, he thinks of Michelle in the house somewhere. Maybe talking on the phone, maybe watching church on TV. He is struggling to open his eyes, to make a louder sound, to send a signal to his wife inside the house. To beam a message to her with his mind: HELP ME!

  But his eyes stay closed. No sound comes out of his mouth. His brain sends no signal.

  Today is the day, he thinks. Today I will die.

  Forty-five years is all you get, Darren Robertson. You busted-up mess. You dug-up yard full of holes. Today is the Lord’s Day.

  Not yours.

  Because the hospital is never fun for long

  Darren opens his eyes and sees the ceiling, the fluorescent lights of the hospital scrolling by overhead. He hears footsteps and rustling and someone saying his name. Then he hears nothing, sees nothing. Black, blue, yellow sparks of light shimmer behind his eyelids. He is out, gone again. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . and then there it is again: the white ceiling, the rectangles of light rolling by like the cars of a train.

  OK, now, someone says. A stranger. It is a stranger’s voice that says: OK now, Mr. Robertson. Just relax. And he does. Like magic. He lets the head inside his head fall back onto the pillow and the body inside his body sink down into the mattress, and he watches as the corridors just keep wheeling by as if there were no end to anything at all. As if all of eternity were a bed rolling down hospital corridors with the bright ceiling floating above, white as a nurse’s cap.

  They take his blood. They listen to his heart. They check his blood pressure. They say quiet, soothing words. A nurse lays her hand on his shoulder. They give him some medicine. He falls asleep.

  When he wakes up again, nobody is there. Or, at least, nobody upright is there. Three other men, lying on their backs, hooked up to monitors are there with him. It is nighttime and the windows are blue. A pale blue curtain hangs near his bed. There is a humming sound and the occasional rattle of a cart in the hallway. Everything looks blue and moonlit. What peace! Just this quiet ticking and humming and the gentle blue light of the hospital at night.

  I could stay here forever, he thinks.

  Until his faculties return and he begins to feel things.

  His mouth is dry. His shoulder is sore. His skin is hot. His ribs ache like he has been punched. He wants to feel like he did just a few minutes earlier.

  Light. Empty. Absent.

  Now he feels like old meat and bones on a hard bed. In a strange room in the middle of the night. Alone.

  The doctor drops by to tell him that he has been a fool. These aren’t his exact words of course. The doctor tells Darren a number of things. No, he has not had a heart attack. Yes, they are certain. No, there doesn’t seem to be anything else wrong. No, his wife was not there. She has not called. Yes, he can go home. There is no need for him to stay any longer.

  The doctor also asks Darren a number of questions that don’t sit well with him. Has he been sleeping well? (No, though he never has.) Has he been worried? Has he been drinking more than usual? (Yes, but that’s nothing new, either, and No.) The doctor nods. Smiles a little. Pats the bed briskly and gets up. Tells him not to worry. To get more fresh air and exercise. And to tell his wife not to call the ambulance next time.

  Just nerves. Fatigue. Wear and tear. Nothing serious.

  (Shitty. Old. Busted up. Nuisance.)

  As the doctor disappears through the blue curtains, Darren pulls his rickety, foggy, humiliated self out of the bed and looks around for his clothes. He pulls them on, rubs his eyes, and shambles down the corridor to reception. The nurse calls Michelle twice. No answer. They shrug at each other with half a smile. She takes a call and swivels in her chair. He turns away and heads out into the night, cuts across the parking lot toward home.

  Because the new day is pink

  And sure enough, Darren’s wife is gone. Somehow he knew she would be. He has a pretty good idea where she has gone. And with whom. Her car is gone. Her dresser drawers are empty. Half the cutlery is gone. Exactly half the dishes. Half the glasses and pots and pans. He finds this precision surprising. Out of character. His laundry has been done. Folded and put away. (This he finds truly shocking. In over twenty-five years of marriage, this has never happened.) She has left the stereo and all the records, thank God, but has taken the big console TV. There is a deep rectangular outline in the rug where it used to sit, looming over the living room. She must have had help with that.

  Darren puts Steve Miller Band on the turntable, lowers the needle, and adjusts the volume. He stares at the soaring white horse with rainbow wings on the cover and smiles. Book of Dreams. He
sits on the couch in the dark, the streetlight shining in through the bay window, and wonders how to feel. More accurately, he wonders if he should wonder how to feel. Or if he should just accept this beautiful, gradual deflation he feels inside his chest. This rolling back of the dark clouds in his head.

  It has been clear to him for a long time now that it is possible to love somebody and at the same time know that if this person just, say, evaporated one day, just disappeared into thin air, your life would be thousands of times better. That was the simple truth. He doesn’t think it is quite the same as wishing someone dead. That would be too complicated. Too fraught. He had, however, wished her gone. And now she was.

  He takes his clothes off slowly. They are grass-stained from the yard, clammy from the hospital, and cold from the walk home. It is a relief to have them off. He leaves them there on the carpet in a pile, underwear on top, and heads down the hallway to the kitchen. He stands naked at the sink and looks out the window at the dimpled yard. His handiwork. The sun is coming up, tinting the air all rosy gold. It is a new pink day, thinks Darren as the sun angles in through the window and his tears splash noisily, one by one, into the stainless-steel sink. They sound like this when they fall:

  Pink! Pink! Pink! Pink!

  The Circus

  Because you think you know what you’re in for

  “A truck is here!” Mercy calls to Trudy from the bottom of the stairs. The dog is barking and whining. “Trudy! A truck is here!”

  Trudy flips her pillow over and lays her cheek on the cool cotton of the pillowcase. She closes her eyes again and starts to fade. It is late afternoon, and she has been trying to get to sleep. Just a quick nap before Claire returns and dinner gets made and she has to go to work and the whole damn thing starts all over again.